Unlocking Africa Africa’s Payments Problem Is Not What You Think – Inside Mobile Money Infrastructure with Nikolai Barnwell
Episode 220 with Nikolai Barnwell, CEO of pawaPay, a leading pan African payments company building the financial rails that connect mobile money wallets across the continent and to the rest of the world.
Nikolai brings over a decade of experience across mobile operating systems, business management, and digital infrastructure to this conversation about how money actually moves across Africa. In addition to leading pawaPay, he serves as a board member at 88mph.ac, an early stage investment fund supporting African startups, and Mdundo, a music streaming platform listed on Nasdaq First North in Copenhagen.
In this episode, he shares how pawaPay is enabling businesses to access mobile money across 19 markets through a single integration, facilitating millions of transactions daily and settling billions in payments across Africa. From simplifying collections, disbursements and remittances to enabling real time visibility and consolidated treasury, Nikolai explains how pawaPay is reducing the friction that has historically limited scale across fragmented payment systems.
He explores the deeper structural role of payments as economic infrastructure, not just a financial service, and why the ability to move money efficiently will define the next phase of Africa’s growth.
What We Discuss With Nikolai
- Mobile money as economic infrastructure and whether it can become the dominant settlement layer for African trade and commerce
- The reality of cross border payments in Africa and what is slowing down scale from foreign exchange liquidity to regulation and fragmented systems
- Why aggregation remains critical and the hidden complexity of integrating across multiple mobile network operators at continental scale
- Regulation as both a constraint and a competitive advantage in African fintech and how it is shaping the next phase of growth
- The race to 2030 and what needs to happen for Africa to build interoperable payment rails that unlock intra African trade and capital flows
Did you miss my previous episode where I discuss How School Meals Can Transform Africa’s Economy: Agriculture, Jobs and Growth? Make sure to check it out!
Connect with Terser:
LinkedIn - Terser Adamu
Instagram - unlockingafrica
Twitter (X) - @TerserAdamu
Connect with Nikolai
LinkedIn - Nikolai Barnwell and PawaPay
Many of the businesses unlocking opportunities in Africa don’t do it alone. If you’d like strategic support on entering or expanding across African markets, reach out to our partners ETK Group: