Open banking is not a live conversation in Sudan. The country is in the middle of a civil war that has displaced more than 14 million people, killed over 150,000, and wrecked much of its banking infrastructure. To understand where Sudan sits, you first have to look at what happened to its financial system, and then ask what, if anything, could eventually make data-sharing frameworks relevant here.
Sudan runs one of only two fully Sharia-compliant banking systems in the world, the other being Iran. The shift began in 1983, when President Nimeiri issued decrees applying Sharia law across the economy and banning interest-based banking. By 1992 the entire system had converted. In place of interest, Sudanese banks use instruments like murabaha (cost-plus financing) and mudarabah (profit-sharing partnerships). The Central Bank of Sudan replaced treasury bills with Islamic financial certificates, and in 1993 it set up a Sharia High Supervisory Board to oversee compliance.
Before the war, Sudan had 39 banks, 20 money-transfer companies, 45 microfinance institutions, and 15 insurers, with the sector heavily concentrated in Khartoum. Financial inclusion was very low. The most recent Findex data dates to 2014, when inclusion sat around 15 percent, and pre-war estimates put the share of adults with a bank account closer to 6 to 10 percent. In a country of roughly 50 million people, that left the large majority outside the formal system.
On 15 April 2023, fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, with Khartoum at the centre. The effect on banking was immediate. All 39 banks stopped operating, more than 70 percent of active branches closed, and bank buildings were shelled, looted, and burned. Data centres in Khartoum were damaged or lost power.
The Electronic Banking Services company (EBS), which acts as the technical arm of the Central Bank, was hit early. EBS runs the central switch that connects the banks, the clearing house, the national ATM switch, and SWIFT processing. When it went down, much of the digital payments system went with it. The currency collapsed too. The pound traded near 580 to the dollar before the war and has since weakened to roughly 2,750, with unofficial inflation estimates above 400 percent a year. Economists put combined bank capital, once 1.5 to 2 billion dollars, at perhaps 300 to 500 million after destroyed assets and the currency slide, and total sector losses above 20 billion dollars.
In the middle of all this, Sudanese turned to digital banking out of necessity. Bank of Khartoum’s Bankak app, launched in 2014, became the most widely used financial tool in the country. It now has around seven million users, activations jumped about 85 percent after the fighting began, and one recent study found close to 90 percent of surveyed users rely on it. In army-held areas most transactions run through Bankak, and even in RSF-controlled Darfur, where official banks do not operate, traders and residents lean on the app.
The picture is not simple. The RSF has monitored Bankak users and jailed state employees who received salaries through it. Informal cash-out agents now charge fees of 10 to 50 percent depending on location and cash supply, and network blackouts can strand people mid-transaction. Beyond Bankak, the options are thin. Telecom operators launched mobile money before the war but adoption stayed small, and the USSD payment services common elsewhere in Africa are largely missing.
EBS has clawed back some ground. Since resuming operations it has processed more than 234 million account-to-account transfers between commercial banks, and the Central Bank says it has been accredited as a SWIFT Service Bureau, the first in Sudan and one of only a handful across the Middle East and Africa. EBS has also contracted a new national payment switch, a “switch of switches” meant to link banks and fintechs under Central Bank supervision, which it expects to launch soon.
There is no open banking framework in Sudan. No regulation, no consultation, no roadmap. The reasons are practical. The country has no data protection law. Its nearest equivalent, the Informatic Offences (Combating) Act of 2007, deals with cybercrime rather than data portability or consent-based sharing, so there is no legal basis for how financial data can be shared, stored, or withdrawn.
Financial inclusion sits somewhere between 6 and 15 percent depending on the estimate. When most of the population has no bank account, there is little formal financial data to share in the first place, and open banking depends on a critical mass of digital activity that Sudan does not have. The infrastructure is also physically damaged, from branches to data centres to the central switch. On top of that, the monetary system is fragmenting. In January 2026 the RSF-aligned Tasis alliance launched “Al-Mustaqbal (Future) Bank” in Nyala, a semi-electronic exchange in Darfur built to bypass the official system, which the Central Bank says holds no banking licence. Sudan is dealing with a dual-economy problem that runs well beyond anything open banking could solve.
Sudan’s priorities are survival and reconstruction, not innovation. Central Bank policy through 2024 to 2026 has focused on stabilisation: steering finance toward productive sectors, curbing speculative lending, and protecting what capital remains. The EBS SWIFT accreditation matters because it begins reconnecting Sudan to global financial infrastructure. The growth of Bankak matters because it shows digital financial services can scale under extreme conditions, even informally. And the fact that about 77 percent of Sudanese have access to a mobile handset matters because the distribution channel for future services already exists.
These are foundations at the most basic level. The distance between where Sudan is now and where open banking becomes relevant is large. The country needs working branches, stable power and internet, a data protection framework, real financial inclusion, and, above all, peace. If stability returns, the humanitarian response could help lay some groundwork, since aid programmes from groups like CGAP and the Cash Consortium of Sudan are already building shared digital payment rails for cash distribution. For now, Sudan’s financial story is about holding together what remains, not building something new on top of it.
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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.
