A Conversational Gateway to Continental Liquidity
United Bank for Africa has entrusted its artificial-intelligence companion, LEO, with a task that long eluded traditional banking infrastructure: the instantaneous dispatch of funds from Brazzaville to Bamako, from Lagos to Libreville, in local currency and without correspondent detours. By embedding the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System into the chatbot’s codebase, UBA positions LEO as the inaugural conversational interface capable of authorising PAPSS transactions in real time. Executives at the bank describe the move as a response to customer appetite for frictionless transfers that respect both linguistic diversity and the region’s complex regulatory tapestry (Afreximbank, 2023).
Engineering Trust through PAPSS Architecture
Conceived by Afreximbank in concert with the African Union, PAPSS clears and settles payments within seconds by netting obligations among participating central banks. For users in Pointe-Noire or Kinshasa, the experience is deceptively simple: a short dialogue with LEO on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or the bank’s mobile app culminates in a near-instant credit to the beneficiary’s account in their domestic currency. Behind the interface, however, national switches exchange messages in ISO 20022 format while the system’s shared legal framework ensures finality recognised by courts from CEMAC through ECOWAS (African Union Commission, 2024). This dual layer of technical and legal interoperability elevates confidence among regulators keen to preserve monetary sovereignty.
Congo-Brazzaville’s Quiet Bet on Digital Corridors
In the Congolese context, LEO’s new function aligns with government objectives to diversify revenue streams beyond hydrocarbons and to channel diaspora remittances into the formal economy. The Ministry of Finance has repeatedly underscored the importance of digitised trade corridors in the national development plan, citing the cost of informal cash shipments that currently eclipse formal remittance inflows. By delivering PAPSS rails through a ubiquitous chatbot, UBA offers entrepreneurs in Brazzaville’s Talangaï district, as well as exporters of timber and cassava, a tool to invoice clients in West or Southern Africa without navigating multiple correspondent banks and volatile conversion spreads.
Diplomatic Overtones of a FinTech Milestone
The timing carries diplomatic resonance. Heads of state have reiterated, at successive African Union summits, that the AfCFTA’s credibility hinges on the continent’s capacity to settle transactions in domestic units rather than hard currency. By demonstrating that an AI interface can operationalise that vision, UBA subtly answers sceptics who question the private sector’s commitment to integration. In interviews, UBA Group Managing Director Oliver Alawuba frames the development as a ‘quantum step toward African financial self-determination,’ echoing regional calls for reduced dependency on extra-continental settlement networks.
Risk Governance and Regulatory Sovereignty
Security considerations remain paramount. According to Shamsideen Fasola, Group Director for Retail and Digital Banking, LEO’s PAPSS module deploys tokenisation and biometric verification, techniques that comply with guidelines issued by the Central Bank of Congo and the Banque des États de l’Afrique Centrale. Analysts at the Lagos-based Centre for Financial Integrity note that real-time screening against continental sanctions lists has been embedded at the settlement layer, pre-empting concerns that rapidity could compromise due diligence (CFI, 2024). The result is a platform that augments, rather than dilutes, the supervisory authority of national regulators.
Catalysing the AfCFTA Ambition
Early anecdotal evidence suggests that small and medium-sized enterprises, traditionally underserved by multinational correspondent banks, are among the first adopters. A Kintele-based agritech exporter reports a fifty-percent reduction in transfer fees when billing clients in Côte d’Ivoire through LEO, freeing capital for expansion of cold-chain capacity. Such micro-level efficiencies accumulate into macro-level momentum for the AfCFTA, whose secretariat estimates that intra-African trade could rise by a quarter if payment frictions were eliminated (AfCFTA Secretariat, 2023). While LEO alone will not deliver that statistic, its contribution exemplifies how private ingenuity can accelerate public policy goals.
A Cautious Glimpse into Tomorrow’s Market Dynamics
Competitors are unlikely to remain on the sidelines. Kenyan and South African lenders have already signalled interest in AI-enabled PAPSS integration, raising prospects for a pluralistic but interoperable payment landscape. Yet UBA’s first-mover advantage confers brand equity and valuable telemetry on user behaviour, data that could inform product iterations ranging from credit scoring to supply-chain finance. For Congo-Brazzaville, the immediate dividend is a modernised payments corridor that complements ongoing telecommunications upgrades and positions the country to capture a larger slice of continental e-commerce.
In an era where diplomatic dialogue increasingly hinges on digital capability, LEO’s cross-border fluency underscores a broader narrative: Africa’s financial renaissance will be conversational, data-driven and distinctly home-grown. The experiment now unfolding in UBA’s servers offers a tangible case study for policymakers intent on crafting inclusive, sovereign and technologically resilient monetary ecosystems.
