Standard Bank moved R164-trillion in payments in 2025

Standard Bank processed more than R164-trillion in payments in 2025, cementing its position as the continent’s largest transactional franchise and underlining the scale of its African payments infrastructure.

The bank handled 2.3 billion individual transactions during the year, a 9% increase on 2024, driven by the expansion of electronic channels, merchant acquiring growth, and the adoption of instant and embedded payments across its markets, it said on Monday in a statement. Cross-border payment flows grew 12%, with Standard Bank holding a 31% market share in South Africa.

Among the notable milestones, the bank became the first African institution to connect clients directly to the Africa-Asia payment corridor via CIPS — China’s cross-border interbank payment system — processing R9.5-billion since the service launched late last year.

Its Aroko blockchain-enabled cross-border settlement rail, operated by the corporate and investment banking division, has processed more than R1-trillion in flows. The bank also partnered to support the Zaru, a rand-denominated stablecoin, as part of its push into digital asset infrastructure including tokenised deposits and blockchain-based settlement.

In South Africa, immediate payments grew 37% year on year, while merchant acquiring platform SimplyBlu posted a 19% increase in new merchant sales. In Uganda, mobile money platform FlexiPay processed R7-billion in transaction value in 2025, up 99% year on year.

To put Standard Bank’s R164-trillion in context: at current exchange rates, that equates to roughly $9-trillion in payment flows — more than four times the value of the entire global mobile money ecosystem.

Structural difference

According to the GSMA’s latest State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money, global mobile money transactions surpassed $2-trillion in 2025, a figure that itself represented a doubling in just four years and was hailed as a landmark milestone for financial inclusion on the continent.

The comparison illustrates the structural difference between retail mobile payments and institutional banking infrastructure.

Read: Vodacom’s mobile money empire now moves R8-trillion a year

Mobile money, dominated by sub-Saharan Africa, serves hundreds of millions of lower-income consumers through platforms such as MTN’s MoMo — which alone processed more than $500-billion in transactions in 2025.

Standard Bank’s volumes, by contrast, reflect the full weight of corporate, institutional and cross-border flows that course through the continent’s largest transactional bank.

The two ecosystems are largely complementary: mobile money broadens access at the base of the pyramid, while banks such as Standard Bank move the capital that underpins trade, liquidity and economic activity at scale.  — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media