Over the last few years, Africa has quietly laid down the rails for a modern digital payments economy. Instant transfer systems, national switches, and wallet ecosystems are now moving more value than at any point in the continent’s history. In Nigeria alone, electronic transactions have crossed historic thresholds with year-on-year acceleration.

Now, a new wave is building on top of this foundation: contactless payments. As NFC-enabled smartphones proliferate across Africa and the Middle East—and global tap-to-pay adoption rises—contactless is shifting from novelty to expectation. National payment stacks are opening up beyond traditional banks, allowing fintechs and new entrants to plug directly into the same real-time infrastructure.

By 2026, tap-to-pay will no longer be a luxury feature. It will be a core capability for banks, fintechs, developers, and enterprises that want to stay relevant in how Africans spend, move, and get paid.

The reach of contactless is also rapidly expanding. What began at retail counters is now appearing on buses, across university campuses, in entertainment venues, markets, and even in high-value service environments like auto dealerships.  

This expansion requires experiences tailored to each context: high-trust flows for large transactions, instant receipts for youth-heavy merchant segments, and battery-efficient terminals for informal markets.  

Africa’s payment story has always been mobile-first and youth-led. The same is true for contactless adoption. Gen Z users and merchants demand speed, clarity, and reliability, while banks, fintechs, and enterprises want systems that integrate flawlessly into existing operations. This creates a shared priority: deliver payment technology that is fast, intuitive, and stress-free—especially for a demographic that has historically struggled with delays and failures.

Then comes the build-versus-buy decision. Building end-to-end contactless infrastructure in-house is increasingly costly, slow, and complex. That is why more institutions are choosing to partner with specialist infrastructure providers rather than rebuild the core stack themselves. In this model, infrastructure companies handle the hard, unglamorous components—terminal protocols, device support, resilience, fraud intelligence—while product teams focus on branding, customer experience, and distribution.

Scaling contactless effectively depends on partnering with providers who already understand the rails, the devices, and the real-world conditions where payments happen.

Where contactless infra partners like CashAfrica fit in

Across all sectors, one pattern emerges: no one wants another standalone solution. Banks seek richer customer experiences, fintechs need deeper engagement, developers require straightforward integrations, and enterprises demand reliability. 

That is the real value of a decentralized contactless infrastructure. It enables reliable, secure, flexible “tap” experiences across devices, terminals, and environments, while freeing product teams from the heavy lifting beneath the surface and centralization from unavailable infrastrcutures like ApplePay or GooglePay.

CashAfrica provides the underlying rails that make contactless fast, secure, device-agnostic, and easy to integrate, enabling teams to focus on designing the moments their users remember. From campuses to concerts, markets to mobility, payroll to retail, CashAfrica powers the tap-to-pay experiences shaping Africa’s digital economy.

For CashAfrica, this is the mission—powering tap-to-pay across Africa so banks, fintechs, developers, and enterprises spend less time wrestling with hardware, protocols, and uptime, and more time creating the future of how Africans pay.

If 2024 and 2025 were about proving that contactless works in African realities, 2026 will be about scaling thoughtfully and imaginatively. The rails are ready, the devices are in users’ hands, and adoption is accelerating. The question is no longer whether contactless will take off, but what you will build on top of it.

Talk to our team about enabling tap-to-pay for your customers: support@cashafrica.co or schedule a call here - www.cashafrica.co/cashtapdemo.