Botswana has a stable, bank-led financial sector and is steadily modernising payments, but open banking is not yet on its agenda. The Bank of Botswana oversees the system, mobile money is growing alongside the banks, and the country is plugged into the Southern African regional payment rails, where its most concrete recent step has been going live with cross-border instant payments.
Botswana has one of the more stable banking sectors in the region, dominated by a handful of well-established banks. Financial inclusion is relatively high by regional standards, and electronic funds transfers and cards are widely used. Mobile money is growing through services like Orange Money, MyZaka, and Smega, but the sector remains more bank-led than in many neighbouring countries.
The regulator is the Bank of Botswana, which oversees the national payments system and licenses electronic payment providers. As a member of the Southern African Development Community, Botswana is connected to the region’s payment systems: SADC-RTGS, the real-time settlement system run by the South African Reserve Bank, and TCIB, the low-value cross-border instant payment scheme that bridges into the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System. In early 2026, banks in Botswana went live with TCIB-based instant cross-border payments with South Africa, a concrete sign of that regional integration taking hold.
There is no open banking framework in Botswana and no published roadmap. The focus is on modernising domestic and cross-border payments and licensing electronic payment providers rather than mandating data sharing. The honest position is early-stage, with solid payments foundations but no open banking regime in view.
For Botswana, the signals to watch are the growth of instant and cross-border payments and the expansion of licensed electronic payment providers. A stable, well-regulated sector that is steadily digitising gives the country a good base, and if regulators later choose to pursue open finance, much of the groundwork will already be in place.
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Open Banking Nigeria (Open Technology Foundation) is a non-profit backed by a group of industry experts across banking, fintech, risk management, and more to drive and launch the open banking standard in Nigeria.
