CashAfrica Partners ChamsSwitch to Unblock Tap-to-Pay Deals

In Short

• CashAfrica has partnered with ChamsSwitch to fix a compliance gap slowing its tap-to-pay rollout in Nigeria.
• CashAfrica will manage the contactless payment experience, while ChamsSwitch will route transactions between banks.
• The deal is meant to speed up integrations that previously stalled during due diligence.

What Happened

CashAfrica, a Nigerian contactless payment infrastructure provider, has signed a partnership with ChamsSwitch to support regulatory and compliance requirements for tap-to-pay.

CashAfrica builds the “tap” part of tap-to-pay, which is the experience where a customer taps a phone or card on a point-of-sale terminal. It uses NFC, which is a short-range wireless link that works when devices are a few centimetres apart.

ChamsSwitch will handle switching and electronic payment processing. In simple terms, it routes the transaction between financial institutions, like a traffic controller that sends payment messages to the right bank and helps update account balances.

CashAfrica said it had ongoing deals with Palmpay, AltBank, and Sterling Bank, but they slowed down due to extended due diligence and regulatory concerns.

Why It Matters

In Nigeria’s payments market, banks and large fintechs often want a licensed switching partner before they connect to a new payment rail. Without that, startups can struggle to pass compliance checks, even if the product works.

CashAfrica’s CEO, Malik Asamu, said the partnership removes a major blocker across fundraising, partnership launches, and integrations. For a tap-to-pay provider, that credibility can be the difference between pilots that stay stuck and deployments that reach merchants.

If the integration runs smoothly, CashAfrica could move faster on bank partnerships, merchant rollout, and new contactless payment use cases across POS networks.