From 21 days to 24 hours: How Verto is chipping at Africa’s payment crisis

For mid-market traders across Africa, a familiar paradox persists in 2026. A South African business can settle a payment to London in 1-2 days. The same business moving money to Lagos takes 5-7 days.

The gap reveals why intra-African trade remains only 15% of total African trade and why fintech platforms like Verto are now racing to compress settlement times that have long constrained continental commerce.

Ola Oyetayo, CEO and co-founder of Verto, articulates the problem plainly.

“Paying Lagos is actually harder than paying London,” he says. “That should not be the case in 2026, particularly when there is so much conversation around growing trade within Africa.”

The fintech is now addressing that friction at scale. Verto processes over $25 billion annually for more than 5,000 businesses moving between $50,000 and $500,000 per transaction across African and global corridors.

Yet the company’s success also illustrates the narrow scope of what fintech can realistically achieve when policy and currency access remain binding constraints.

The settlement mechanics

When a South African exporter uses traditional banking to pay a Nigerian supplier, the money does not travel in a straight line. Direct clearing rails between South African Rand and Nigerian Naira do not exist at scale, so the transaction routes through a correspondent bank, typically in London or New York.

The Rand converts to USD or GBP, moves internationally, then converts again into Naira. The South African bank submits the instruction. The London correspondent processes it through manual anti-money laundering desks, moving funds based on liquidity across time zones.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) then applies compliance checks before releasing funds to the recipient’s bank.

Read also: A chat with Verto’s Anthony Oduu on solving Nigeria’s $30bn e-commerce liquidity crisis

The delay splits equally between correspondent banking architecture and regulatory approval. South Africa’s Exchange Control requirements and Nigeria’s CBN compliance protocols both create bottlenecks. This structural breakdown means SA-London settlement takes 1 to 2 days, while SA-Nigeria regularly extends to 5 to 7 business days.

The financial impact makes it all more complex. A $10,000 transaction from South Africa to Nigeria through traditional banking carries $430 to $650 in combined costs, representing 4.3-6.5% total friction. Foreign exchange spreads on ZAR/NGN pairs run 3-7% depending on whether the transaction uses official CBN windows or parallel markets.

SWIFT and correspondent lifting fees add $50 to $100. Local receiving bank deductions consume another $30 to $50.

Verto compresses this significantly. The same $10,000 transaction costs $75 to $150 through Verto, or 0.75-1.5% friction. The FX spread remains the largest component at 0.6-1.2%, reflecting genuine market risk on exotic pairs. Verto's operational fees stay flat and transparent rather than stacking hidden lifting fees at each correspondent stop.

How Verto addresses the gap

But cost savings alone do not explain the London preference. Oyetayo identifies a critical breaking point.

“When total transactional friction exceeds 5%-6%, or when settlement uncertainty passes the 5-day mark, the economic rationale breaks down,” he says. “South African mid-market enterprises simply determine that the risk-adjusted return isn’t worth it. They will pivot their supply chains to Europe, India, or China instead of selling deeper into the continent.”

Verto settles transactions same-day or next-day (T+0 to T+1) by bypassing legacy SWIFT layers through localised liquidity pools and integrated banking rails. Consider a real case Verto handles regularly:

A South African agricultural equipment manufacturer selling irrigation components to Nigerian farming operations. Using traditional banking, a $100,000 payment took 21 days to clear and cost $5,000 in fees. The exporter could not sustain production while waiting. Through Verto, the same transaction clears in 24 to 48 hours at $1,500 cost. That transformed the deal from "too risky" to "highly profitable recurring trade route."

What fintech cannot fix

Yet Oyetayo is explicit about fintech’s limits. Verto can directly solve settlement friction, expense, and fragmented rails by integrating with local banking systems and removing intermediate clearing houses.

Fintech cannot manufacture hard currency liquidity when central banks restrict FX access.

When the CBN restricts FX access or imposes rigid capital controls, Verto must operate strictly within those legal parametres, he explains. We do not invent liquidity out of thin air. Instead, we optimise price discovery and match natural buyers and sellers of local currencies more efficiently than a fragmented interbank market can. True structural liquidity requires macro policy changes, export diversification, and regulatory harmonisation.

This constraint explains why the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), while necessary, will not magically solve Africa’s friction problem.

“If local currencies are volatile and hard currency is scarce, does PAPSS shift friction or solve it?” Oyetayo asks. “If central banks backing PAPSS do not have the hard currency reserves to guarantee instant convertibility and settlement at the back end, PAPSS risks simply shifting the friction from the commercial bank level to central bank settlement gridlock.”

The broader picture

Fintech payment infrastructure has scaled across Africa for five years. Yet intra-African trade remains only 15% of total trade, far below Europe’s 60% regional trade. This puzzling slowness suggests payment friction, while real, coexists with other barriers fintech cannot address.

“Fintech has solved the digital movement of money, but it cannot pave roads or clear customs bureaucracy,” Oyetayo notes. Where physical infrastructure allows, though, mid-market trade responds to improved payments. Verto opening a seamless corridor unlocks deals that appeared too risky before because it removes financial anxiety about cross-border execution.

Verto is a real step forward for mid-market B2B traders with sufficient volume to justify adopting the platform. South African businesses still find it easier to pay in London than Lagos. That paradox persists. But for the traders Verto serves, the transformation from 21 days to 24 hours and from 5% cost to 1.5% cost makes African expansion economically rational.