Cameroon is the largest economy in the Central African franc zone, and its most interesting payments development is the rise of virtual cards linked to mobile money. There is no national open banking framework, but the regional CEMAC infrastructure and a growing bridge between wallets and card networks are laying real groundwork.
Digital finance in Cameroon is led by mobile money, with MTN Mobile Money and Orange Money the dominant wallets. The live story is how those wallets are connecting to global card networks: MTN and Orange have been rolling out Mastercard and Visa virtual prepaid cards, partnering with banks such as Access Bank, under the CEMAC payment services regulation of 2018. That bridge between mobile money and cards is exactly the kind of interoperability that open banking would extend.
Cameroon is a member of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), so much of its payments infrastructure is regional. The region runs on GIMACPAY, the shared payment system, which passed 601.7 billion CFA francs in transactions in 2025. The regional central bank, BEAC, adopted a CEMAC-wide QR code and instant payment standard in April 2026 and connected the region to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System in July 2026. BEAC is the monetary regulator, with bank supervision handled by COBAC.
There is no open banking framework in Cameroon and no published roadmap. The near-term work is expanding the wallet-to-card bridge, deepening mobile money, and building out the regional CEMAC systems, rather than mandating consent-based data sharing. The honest position is early-stage, though the interoperability groundwork is moving.
For Cameroon, the signals to watch are the spread of virtual cards linked to mobile money and the rollout of the CEMAC instant payment and QR standards. As wallets, banks, and card networks become more interconnected, the country builds the kind of infrastructure open banking would eventually sit on.
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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.
