UBA Transforms Local Currency Africa Trade With Integration of LEO AI Chatbot and PAPSS

United Bank for Africa (UBA) has transformed Pan African trade with the integration of its LEO Artificial Integration (AI) chatbot with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) developed in partnership with the African Export-Import Bank (Afrexim Bank), for end to end transaction on PAPSS with LEO via local African currencies.

Commenting at the launch today, Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, UBA, Oliver Alawuba, said that the integration of PAPSS to LEO, the first chatbot banking in Africa is what UBA is all about, uniting Africans.

“This feature we are launching today is a reversal of many centuries of Africans tied to foreigners when dealing with each other. Africans traded with each other on their own terms and currency a long time ago. PAPSS came in and we are now trading with each other in our local currencies. Now someone in Accra can send payments by digital goods to someone in Lagos and the shoe trader can export and receive naira real time, borderless,” Alawuba said.

Transfer limits and interval of transactions for users on PAPPS is defined by the regulating Central Bank in each jurisdiction.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) currently has $2,000 equivalent and below as transfer limit for individual transactions that will need no further documentation but must have know your customer (KYC) documentation on the accounts, and for the corporates it is up to $5,000.

Some of the other African PAPSS markets have many multiples of those limits, according to Mike Ogbalu the CEO of PAPSS.

Ogbalu said UBA has been an excellent partner with Afrexim and has been on the Pan African journey for a long time.

“UBA was one of the first ones to connect with the PAPSS platform. The dream to connect Africa has been there for UBA for a longtime. It’s not a surprise that UBA is connecting African trade. PAPPS has transformed how we trade in the continent by bringing about instant payment. Since we went live we average about 7 seconds to confirm a payment,” Ogbalu said.

Ogbalu said Afrexim Bank has had an excellent run with UBA and now is extending PAPSS from branches to digital channels.

“UBA is one of our top partners in Nigeria and Africa. The digital channel will improve convenience and help bring acceleration in trade and commerce. PAPSS will have an accelerating effect, but beyond that its only as strong as our partners and at the top is UBA,” Ogbalu said.

The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System – PAPSS is a centralised Financial Market Infrastructure that enables the efficient flow of money securely across African borders, minimising risk and contributing to financial integration across the regions.

PAPSS collaborates with African central banks to offer payment and settlement solutions that commercial banks and licensed payment service providers (switches, fintechs, aggregators, etc.) across the continent can connect to, making these services accessible to the public.

To date, PAPSS has developed and launched 3 payment solutions: PAPSS Instant Payment System (IPS), PAPSS African Currency Marketplace (PACM), and the PAPSSCARD.

“We as a bank must continue to support African youths to let the economy grow. That’s why we have put in place a $6bn SME fund, and today working with Afrexim we are putting in place a platform to make this system work seamlessly,” the UBA CEO, Alawuba said.

UBA was the first to originate transactions out of Nigeria on PAPPS in branches, but the launch of PAPPS on UBA’s LEO is to enable a move to 24hrs transaction from nine-to-five in branches, according to Ogbalu.

Up to 121 billion Ghana Cedi has passed through since launch in a few weeks and a lot from the Nigerian side, Ogbalu said.

“This is a confluence of convenience, cost of transaction and user adoption. We have significantly lowered the cost of payments from about $25 to about $2 in local currency,” Ogbalu said.

The Ghana Nigeria trade corridor and others like Cameroon – Chad, and Mano river corridor in West Africa is also being opened to increase Africa trade. Over 150 banks across Africa have been connected to the PAPPS network.

Demonstration of PAPSS end to end with LEO on WhatsApp

There was a demonstration of PAPSS end to end with UBA’s LEO chatbot on WhatsApp.

The process is AI enabled and the process is listed below:

Enter LEO on WhatsApp, click send money, choose transfer across Africa, choose recipient country, choose recipient Bank, input recipient account number, confirm the name and beneficiary, select option, input amount in recipient currency, input narration, confirm information, then proceed to make payment, select option A, select account number to debit for the transaction, authenticate the transaction with secure PIN or password.

A confirmation message and receipt will be received.

The UBA ChatBanking service, known as Leo, can be accessed on WhatsApp using the number +234 903 001 0007. You can add this number to your contacts and then initiate a chat with Leo by sending “Hi”

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