Mauritius is the most open-banking-ready market in this group, and it is moving deliberately toward it. The Bank of Mauritius runs a dedicated open banking workstream through its Innov8 sandbox, its Digital Rupee pilot is live with a commercial bank, and mobile payments have grown more than tenfold in five years. The country is past the foundations stage and into active experimentation.
Mauritius punches above its size in finance. It is a well-regulated international financial centre with high banking penetration, a stable currency, and a regulator, the Bank of Mauritius, that has been unusually forward-leaning on digital finance. That combination is why open banking is a live project here rather than a distant idea.
The Bank of Mauritius runs Innov8, a regulatory sandbox and innovation hub, and within it a dedicated open banking workstream that is developing the standards and testing environment for consumer-permissioned data sharing. Rather than publishing a single rulebook and waiting, the regulator is building the technical and supervisory groundwork alongside industry.
Two other pieces set Mauritius apart. Its Digital Rupee, a central bank digital currency, is in a live pilot with a commercial bank, putting Mauritius among the few African markets testing a retail CBDC in practice. The legal scaffolding is already in place too: a digital-banking licence framework lets fully digital banks operate, and the Data Protection Act 2017, aligned with international standards, gives the country a real basis for consent-based data sharing, the piece so many of its neighbours lack.
Adoption is following the policy. Mobile payment volumes rose from about 1.8 billion rupees in February 2020 to 25.7 billion rupees in April 2025, a more than tenfold increase in five years. That growth gives any future open banking service a real base of digital activity to draw on, rather than the thin data most of the region contends with.
Mauritius has the regulator, the data-protection law, the licensing framework, and the payment momentum. What it does not yet have is a finalised, binding open banking standard, and that is the piece to watch. If the Innov8 workstream converts into published rules, Mauritius is well placed to be one of the first African markets with open banking running in practice rather than on paper.
Important Links
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.
