For decades, moving money across Africa’s borders has been an exercise in friction: a patchwork of currencies, correspondent banks, clearing delays and costs that fall hardest on the businesses and households that can least afford them. On Thursday, two financial players staked a claim to dismantling that friction, announcing an expanded alliance intended to reshape how value flows into, out of and across the continent.
Absa Group, one of Africa’s largest diversified financial services providers, has named Thunes – the Singapore-based payments network that bills itself as the “Smart Superhighway” for moving money around the world – as a strategic Multicurrency Clearing partner for the Group. The deal elevates a relationship that began earlier this year into something closer to shared infrastructure, binding Absa’s deep Pan-African banking franchise to Thunes’ sprawling global connectivity.
The announcement is less a single product launch than a declaration of direction. It signals how an established African banking group intends to compete in an era when payments have become the connective tissue of global commerce, and when speed, transparency and choice increasingly separate the banks that keep clients from those that lose them.
From a South African pilot to a continental ambition
The expanded collaboration builds on the two companies’ recent launch of Absa Global Pay in South Africa, an early proof point that, by the partners’ account, validated the logic of the partnership. That rollout combined Absa’s strong banking franchise and Pan-African reach with Thunes’ global payment connectivity and local-market capabilities — a pairing of a continental incumbent with a specialist network built for cross-border movement.
What began as a South African solution is now being scaled into a broader strategy. The enlarged relationship will support Absa’s cross-border payments ambitions across Africa and in global markets, extending the model well beyond its initial market.
At the heart of the arrangement sits Multicurrency Clearing, which Absa frames as a fundamental pillar of its strategy to deliver greater speed, transparency and choice in cross-border payments. In practical terms, the arrangement links Absa’s Pan-African banking footprint directly to Thunes’ Direct Global Network – a system that spans more than 140 countries, 90 currencies and 220 payment methods.
The reach of that network is the point. Rather than confining payouts to traditional bank accounts, the collaboration is designed to push money seamlessly to mobile wallets and card rails as well – a crucial capability on a continent where mobile money, not the bank branch, is often the primary financial lifeline. The partners say the system carries 24/7 liquidity and enterprise-grade compliance, addressing two of the most persistent anxieties in cross-border finance: the availability of funds around the clock, and the regulatory rigor demanded by moving money across jurisdictions.
A ‘natural evolution’ and a bet on interoperability
For Absa, the deepening of ties with Thunes is framed as the next logical step rather than a departure.
Deepening our strategic collaboration with Thunes is a natural evolution of our commitment to delivering intuitive, world-class financial services. Following the success of our Global Pay solution launched with Thunes in South Africa, expanding this collaboration allows Absa to leverage Thunes’ expansive and trusted Network across the continent to extend our cross-border solution, giving our clients unprecedented currency choice, speed, and cost efficiency.
— Richard Southey, Managing Executive: Payments as a Service, Absa CIB
For Thunes, the agreement is a chance to embed its infrastructure more deeply into African commerce by pairing its global reach with the kind of local banking relationships that are difficult to replicate.
Our initial work with Absa demonstrated the tremendous impact of combining deep local banking relationships with interoperable global payment reach. By extending our collaboration and taking on a strategic Multicurrency Clearing role supporting Absa Group, we are providing the digital infrastructure and liquidity needed to connect African businesses and consumers to global payment ecosystems seamlessly.
— Daniel Parreira, Senior Vice President, Africa at Thunes
The language from both camps circles a single word: interoperability. The wager is that the future of cross-border payments belongs not to any one bank or network operating in isolation, but to the players willing to stitch their systems together — banks providing trusted local relationships and regulatory grounding, networks providing the rails that reach everywhere at once.
To mark the milestone, executive leaders from both organisations gathered for an official signing ceremony at SIBOS 2026 in Miami, the global banking industry’s premier gathering – a venue chosen, no doubt, for its symbolism as much as its calendar.
Why it matters
The ambition sketched by Absa and Thunes speaks to a larger story unfolding across Africa, where a young, mobile-first population and a fast-growing base of businesses are demanding financial services that match the pace of global commerce. Cross-border payments have long been the stubborn bottleneck in that story — slow, opaque and expensive. Partnerships that promise to route money across 140-plus countries and 220 payment methods, settling into wallets and cards as easily as bank accounts, are aimed squarely at that bottleneck.
Whether the alliance delivers on its promise of “unprecedented” choice, speed and cost efficiency will be measured in the quieter metrics of everyday finance: the time it takes a remittance to clear, the fees shaved from a merchant’s payout, the hours a treasury team no longer spends chasing liquidity. For now, the two companies have planted a flag — and tied their fortunes more tightly to the proposition that Africa’s next chapter will be written, in part, in the language of frictionless payments.
