The Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Intrinsic, Nkebet Mesele, has highlighted growing tensions between rapid innovation in Africa’s payments ecosystem and tightening regulatory frameworks, warning that sustainability, infrastructure constraints, and compliance costs are reshaping how the sector grows.
The executive examined regulation, operational pressures, and the structural gaps affecting payment operators across the continent, noting that while regulatory reforms aim to strengthen trust and stability, they are also increasing commercial pressure on businesses.
“One of the biggest gaps is the pace at which regulatory expectations evolve compared to the operational realities of businesses trying to scale across fragmented markets,” she told The in an interview.
Mesele explained that operators are dealing with infrastructure limitations, varying levels of digital maturity, foreign exchange pressures, and rising fraud risks, all of which increase compliance costs.
“Many payment companies are operating across environments with infrastructure limitations, varying levels of digital maturity, foreign exchange pressures, and increasing fraud risks. Compliance is necessary, but it also comes with real operational costs,” she said, adding that smaller operators may struggle to absorb these costs while remaining commercially viable.
Mesele stressed that regulation itself is not the challenge, but rather how it is implemented.
“The challenge is not regulation itself. Strong regulation is important for trust and long-term ecosystem stability. The real issue is ensuring that regulatory frameworks are implemented with a practical understanding of how payment businesses actually operate.”
She noted that payment firms are facing high structure-related costs, including investments in uptime, fraud prevention systems, dispute resolution, and customer support, while still trying to keep services affordable.
“A major one is infrastructure cost. Many operators are still investing heavily in reliability, uptime, fraud management systems, dispute resolution, and customer support while also trying to maintain affordable services for consumers,” she said.
She also pointed to profitability pressures, particularly in highly competitive markets where margins remain thin, noting, “There is also the issue of profitability. Many digital payment services operate on very thin margins, particularly in highly competitive markets.”
According to her, increasing compliance obligations are forcing firms to rethink pricing models, operational structures, and growth expectations, even as public conversations tend to focus more on innovation and transaction growth than sustainability.
Mesele described fragmentation as one of the biggest structural barriers to scaling payments across Africa, citing differences in regulatory frameworks, infrastructure standards, settlement systems, and licensing regimes.
“Fragmentation remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges. Different markets operate under different regulatory frameworks, infrastructure standards, settlement processes, and licensing structures,” she said.
She added that interoperability challenges extend beyond technology and require policy alignment and institutional collaboration.
“Interoperability also goes beyond technology. It involves policy alignment and collaboration between financial institutions, infrastructure providers, regulators, and payment companies, as well as shared standards around compliance and security.”
She warned that without greater coordination, seamless regional expansion would remain difficult.
Commenting on recent reforms in Nigeria’s payments and foreign exchange ecosystem, she said the industry is undergoing a structural shift from rapid expansion to deeper regulatory maturity: “The payments industry in Africa is maturing very quickly. What we are seeing now is a transition from an era focused primarily on expansion and innovation into one that increasingly prioritises governance, compliance, consumer protection, and systemic stability.”
She said reforms around foreign exchange, remittances, and transaction monitoring reflect broader efforts to strengthen oversight, with regulators paying closer attention to how money flows through digital channels and how risks are managed.
At the same time, she noted that rising digital adoption is placing dual pressure on operators, explaining, “Customer adoption of digital payments continues to grow rapidly, which means operators are under pressure from both sides, and they must innovate fast enough to meet market demand while also strengthening operational controls and compliance structures.”
Mesele also warned that rising compliance requirements could have unintended consequences for financial inclusion if not carefully balanced.
“It is a delicate balance. On the other hand, ER compliance frameworks help improve trust and reduce systemic risks. On the other hand, if compliance becomes too expensive or operationally burdensome, smaller players may struggle to serve underserved communities effectively,” she said.
She stressed that financial inclusion must also be commercially viable to be sustainable, saying, “Financial inclusion cannot be viewed only from a regulatory perspective. It must also be commercially viable for operators providing those services.”
On whether African fintech firms prioritised growth over sustainability in earlier years, she said the industry is now entering a more disciplined phase.
“In some cases, yes. For a long time, the ecosystem was heavily focused on scale, customer acquisition, and expansion,” she said.
She added that the focus is now shifting toward governance, profitability, operational resilience, and investor scrutiny: “Investors are asking harder questions. Regulators are demanding stronger controls. Businesses themselves are becoming more conscious of operational discipline.”
Mesele called for stronger engagement between regulators and industry operators, noting that both sides ultimately share similar goals, saying, “There needs to be stronger engagement between both sides.” Regulators and operators ultimately want many of the same outcomes: trust, stability, innovation, and financial inclusion.
She said effective frameworks are built through consistent dialogue, where operators provide market insight and regulators provide structure and oversight.
Looking ahead, she said Africa’s payments sector will be defined less by speed and more by sustainability: “The next phase will be defined less by speed and more by sustainability.”
She pointed to operational resilience, governance, interoperability, profitability, ecosystem collaboration, and regulatory alignment as key drivers of future growth: “Africa’s payments opportunity remains significant, but the ecosystem will need stronger coordination and more sustainable operating models to fully realise its potential.”
From her experience at Intrinsic, she said many companies scale faster than their internal systems and governance structures can support.
“One recurring issue is that many businesses scale faster than their operational structures evolve,” she said.
She also highlighted persistent talent shortages in specialised areas such as risk management, compliance, operations, and payment infrastructure, saying, “We also see significant talent gaps across specialised areas within payments, particularly around operations, risk management, compliance, and payment infrastructure.”
She stressed that payments education is becoming increasingly critical as the industry grows in complexity and importance: “It is extremely important. Payments are no longer a niche function within financial services. It now sits at the centre of commerce, banking, digital identity, and financial inclusion.”
She noted that many professionals still rely on fragmented on-the-job learning and called for more structured training systems.
“Many professionals still learn through fragmented on-the-job experience without structured education across the broader ecosystem.”
She said this gap informed the creation of Intrinsic, which aims to strengthen payments capability and talent development across Africa.