Somalia is further along than its reputation suggests. In January 2025 the Central Bank of Somalia launched the Somali Payment Switch and the Somali Instant Payment System, the country’s first national payment rails, and in March 2026 Somalia joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System. Open banking as a formal framework is not here yet, but the infrastructure it would depend on is finally being built.
Somalia runs on mobile money. After years of conflict, and with no fully functioning central bank for much of that period, cash gave way to telco wallets rather than traditional bank accounts. Hormuud Telecom’s EVC Plus is the anchor. It received the country’s first mobile money licence in 2021 and was re-certified by the GSMA in 2025, and mobile services now carry roughly two-thirds of all payments. For most Somalis, the phone is the bank.
The Central Bank of Somalia has spent recent years rebuilding the formal system. In January 2025, working with the technology provider BPC, it launched the Somali Payment Switch and the Somali Instant Payment System, giving the country its first nationwide instant payment infrastructure with QR support. The switch connects banks and mobile money operators so funds can move between them in real time, which is the interoperability layer any open banking model depends on.
In March 2026 Somalia connected to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, the continental platform that lets banks settle cross-border payments in local currencies. For a country reconnecting to the global financial system after decades on the margins, that link matters as much as any domestic reform.
There is no open banking framework in Somalia, and no timeline for one. The priorities are more basic: extending the new switch, bringing more banks and users onto formal rails, and strengthening the supervisory capacity of a central bank that only resumed full operations in the past decade. Formal bank account ownership stays low even as mobile penetration is high, so the raw material for data sharing sits with a few large wallet providers rather than a broad banking system.
Somalia’s story is about building the foundations, and those foundations are going in faster than most expected. The Somali Payment Switch, the instant payment system, PAPSS membership, and a licensed, GSMA-certified mobile money sector are exactly the pieces that need to exist before open banking becomes a real question. The country is not there yet, but it is closer than the old narrative allows.
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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.
