The Banque Centrale de Tunisie (BCT) is the primary regulator of banks, payment institutions, and monetary policy. It has been the main driver of fintech-related reforms over the past several years.

In 2020, the BCT launched a regulatory sandbox, selecting four fintechs for its first cohort to test solutions in remote customer identification, cross-border compensation, cryptocurrency, and central bank digital currency. The sandbox runs in six-to-twelve-month cycles with caps on user numbers and transaction volumes. A fast-track version called Sandbox Express was later introduced for banks and licensed financial institutions testing lower-risk innovations.

Alongside the sandbox, the BCT established a dedicated Fintech Committee and the BCT-Lab, an internal experimental space for testing new solutions aimed at digitizing the central bank’s own processes.

Tunisia’s data protection law dates back to 2004, Organic Law No. 2004-63. It was progressive for its time but was written well before API-based data sharing, consent-based portability, or third-party provider frameworks entered the conversation. A comprehensive bill introduced in 2025 aims to modernize data privacy to align with the EU’s GDPR. It introduces concepts like profiling, automated decision-making, and data protection by design. If passed, this would be a necessary precondition for any future open banking regulation.

The broader regulatory environment is a mixed picture. Tunisia passed the Startup Act in 2018, providing tax exemptions and foreign currency access for startups. That was genuinely progressive and put Tunisia ahead of many African peers in supporting tech entrepreneurship. But 53% of Tunisian fintechs still describe the national regulatory framework as discouraging, according to industry surveys. The gap between the ambition in policy documents and the reality of navigating approvals is real.

Payments infrastructure

TUNPAY and mobile payment interoperability

In May 2026, the BCT formalized TUNPAY through Note N°2026-132, signed by Governor Fethi Zouheir Nouri. TUNPAY is a unified national label that all mobile wallet issuers, including banks, La Poste Tunisienne, and licensed payment institutions, must adopt. The idea is simple: consumers see the same TUNPAY mark regardless of which provider they use, and interoperability between wallets becomes the default rather than the exception.

The label was developed in consultation with the Société Monétique Tunisie (SMT), which manages the national mobile payment switch. Interoperability between mobile money accounts and bank and postal accounts has technically been possible since April 2018, but adoption was slow. TUNPAY is an attempt to make it visible and consistent.

The numbers behind the push: 8.4 million mobile transactions were processed in 2025, worth 1.769 billion Tunisian dinars (roughly $616 million). Money transfers accounted for about half of all mobile transactions, merchant payments around 18%. The payment service provider network expanded from 368 to 435 entities in a single year.

La Poste Tunisienne and the e-Dinar Wallet

La Poste Tunisienne is the country’s largest non-bank financial institution, holding over 6.4 million postal accounts and about 45% market share by account volume. In July 2025, La Poste launched the e-Dinar Wallet, a free digital wallet available to any Tunisian citizen with a national ID card and phone number. No bank account required.

The wallet enables money transfers via the D17 mobile app, bill payments, merchant payments, and cash withdrawal from La Poste ATMs without a card. It can be reloaded through bank transfers, postal transfers, or cash deposits at post offices. The wallet is valid for ten years.

For a country where most people do not have bank accounts, the postal financial system is the de facto entry point to formal finance. La Poste’s reach into rural and underserved areas gives it a role that commercial banks have not matched.

Paysmart.tn

In November 2022, the BCT and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched Paysmart.tn, a digital bill payment aggregation platform. The platform was designed by SMT, built by Tunisian fintech WeSettle, and piloted with the national electricity provider (STEG), the national water provider (SONEDE), and seven financial institutions.

The IFC supported the BCT on the design of its broader digital payment strategy. The project was funded through the World Bank Group’s MSME 2.0 program, with backing from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.

ISO 20022 and clearing modernization

Tunisia has adopted the SWIFT MX (ISO 20022) messaging standard and overhauled its National Clearing System. This is the kind of technical upgrade that gets little attention but matters for any eventual move toward open banking. Richer, standardized payment data is easier to share through APIs when the policy framework catches up to the infrastructure.

Digital identity: E-Houwiya

Tunisia has deployed E-Houwiya, a state-recognized digital identity system. As of early 2026, it has about 200,000 mobile ID users, including 15,000 Tunisians living abroad. The system provides authentication, digital signatures, and access to government services.

More relevant to financial services: E-Houwiya has been integrated into banking for remote onboarding, KYC compliance, and secure transactions. The BCT’s strategy explicitly links E-Houwiya to Paysmart.tn, aiming for an open model where the operator provides access but the customer remains free to move between providers.

Civil society groups have raised concerns about privacy, citing outdated data protection legislation and potential risks of mass surveillance. These are legitimate concerns. A digital ID system linked to financial services without strong data protection creates obvious risks, which is one more reason the pending data protection bill matters.

The CBDC experiment

Tunisia was one of the earlier African countries to experiment with central bank digital currency. In July 2021, the BCT partnered with the Banque de France on a cross-border wholesale CBDC trial, conducting a wire transfer between French and Tunisian commercial banks using blockchain-based technology.

The motivation was remittances. A large Tunisian diaspora in France sends significant volumes of money home, and the existing process is slow and expensive. The CBDC experiment tested whether those transfers could be made in real time, with more transparency and lower cost.

Tunisia remains in the pilot phase. The CBDC has not moved to public deployment. But the experiment demonstrated willingness from the BCT to test new approaches to cross-border payments and financial infrastructure.

The forex reform

In December 2025, the Tunisian Parliament voted to allow residents to open foreign currency bank accounts for the first time. This was the first update to Tunisia’s foreign exchange code since 1976. The vote passed 69 to 17, with 17 abstentions.

A near-identical proposal had been defeated just one year earlier, in November 2024, by a margin of 51 against and 48 for. The reversal suggests the pressure to retain tech talent and support the digital economy outweighed fears about monetary instability.

For Tunisia’s tech and fintech ecosystem, this matters. Thousands of Tunisian developers and freelancers work for international clients but previously could not hold foreign currency legally. The reform removes a bottleneck that has pushed talent and capital out of the country for years.

The fintech ecosystem

Tunisia has roughly 52 fintech startups, with 21 funded and one at Series A or beyond. The ecosystem is small compared to Nigeria, Kenya, or South Africa, but it is active and growing.

Flouci, operated by Kaoun, is a digital banking super-app for francophone Africa. It has attracted over 250,000 active accounts and more than 200,000 downloads. Users can open accounts, fund wallets, and manage financial operations entirely from the app.

Konnect, founded in 2021 and licensed by the BCT, provides businesses with digital payment tools including payment links, e-commerce plugins, and an API. It became the first company to receive a Payment Facilitator license from the BCT. Konnect has recorded over 20% month-on-month growth and reached a 4% share of Tunisia’s e-commerce market within three years.

Ooredoo Fintech received regulatory approval from the BCT in February 2026 to launch walletii by Ooredoo, a digital wallet aimed at underbanked populations. This is notable because it brings a major telecoms player into the mobile money space, following the model that worked in East Africa.

The Startup Act of 2018 provides real support: tax exemptions, import duty waivers, and preferential foreign currency access for eligible companies under eight years old with fewer than 100 employees. But the regulatory environment around financial services remains tight. Getting licensed, securing approvals, and navigating compliance still takes time and patience that many startups struggle to afford.

Why open banking is not on the agenda yet

Several things explain why Tunisia has not moved toward open banking.

The financial inclusion gap is wide. When 64% of adults are excluded or underserved, the priority is getting people into the financial system at all, not enabling them to share data between providers they do not yet use. Open banking assumes an existing base of digitally active customers with transaction histories. Tunisia is still building that base.

The data protection law is outdated. The 2004 law predates every concept relevant to open banking: consent-based API sharing, data portability, third-party provider accreditation, and liability for data breaches in multi-party systems. Until the 2025 modernization bill passes, there is no legal framework capable of supporting structured financial data sharing.

The BCT has other priorities. Launching TUNPAY, expanding the Paysmart platform, developing the CBDC pilot, integrating E-Houwiya into financial services, and modernizing clearing systems. Each of these is a multi-year project. Adding an open banking framework on top would strain institutional capacity.

The banking sector is cautious. Tunisian banks have been slow to digitize compared to their peers in other North African markets. API readiness is low, and there is limited commercial pressure from fintechs because the fintech sector itself is small.

What could change the picture

Tunisia is assembling more prerequisites for open banking than most countries at a similar stage.

TUNPAY creates interoperability across wallets and banks. E-Houwiya provides a digital identity layer linked to financial services. The ISO 20022 migration standardizes payment data. The pending data protection bill would establish GDPR-aligned consent and portability rules. Paysmart.tn centralizes bill payments. And the forex reform removes a structural barrier to fintech growth.

If digital wallet adoption continues at the current rate, and the e-Dinar Wallet pulls in more of the unbanked population through La Poste, Tunisia will have a large and growing pool of users generating transaction data. That data, sitting inside wallets and postal accounts rather than traditional banks, creates a natural case for data portability frameworks.

Tunisia also sits at the intersection of francophone Africa and the Arab world, with a diaspora concentrated in France. If the EU’s open finance frameworks begin influencing North African regulatory thinking, or if regional initiatives through bodies like the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy gain traction, Tunisia would be well positioned to participate.

For now, open banking in Tunisia is a medium-term possibility rather than a near-term plan. The central bank is focused on getting digital payments to work at scale. If it succeeds, the data-sharing conversation will follow. The question is how long that takes, and whether the regulatory environment can keep up with what the market is already building.