AFSIC welcomes Tola Mobile as sponsor – Inside Tola’s Cross-Border Payments Strategy
As Africa’s digital economy continues to attract global capital, one challenge keeps surfacing for businesses looking to scale across the continent: payments infrastructure that works in Lagos doesn’t necessarily work in Nairobi, and what succeeds in Accra may fall flat in Kampala. It’s a fragmentation problem that Tola Mobile has spent years solving — building direct integrations with mobile money operators across 24 African markets to give merchants a single point of access to a famously diverse payments landscape.
Tola joins this year’s AFSIC – Investing in Africa 2026 as a sponsor, where over 200 investors and 350+ speakers will gather to explore the opportunities shaping the continent’s investment story. Ahead of the conference, we spoke to Tola about what differentiates their approach to payment orchestration, the outsized role mobile money plays in financial inclusion, and what they’re hoping to get out of their time at AFSIC 2026.
What key challenges does Tola Mobile address, and what is your mission?
One of the biggest misconceptions about African payments is that people talk about “the African market” as though it’s a single ecosystem. It isn’t. Payment dynamics vary significantly across the continent. Some markets are bank account, card and PSP-led, while much of sub-Saharan Africa is built around mobile money. Businesses expanding across Africa quickly discover that success in one market doesn’t automatically translate into another.
That’s the challenge Tola was founded to solve.
Our mission is to simplify access to Africa’s fragmented payment landscape through a single, scalable platform. Rather than merchants having to build and maintain separate integrations with mobile money operators and local payment providers in every country, they integrate with Tola once and gain access to multiple markets through a consistent technical and operational framework.
Ultimately, we want businesses to focus on growing across Africa while we take care of the complexity of local payments.
Tola connects to mobile money operators across 24 African markets through a single platform – how did you build that kind of reach, and what’s been the biggest challenge in scaling it?
We’ve built the platform market by market over a number of years, focusing on creating high-quality, direct integrations rather than taking shortcuts.
Each new market requires understanding local regulations, operator APIs, settlement models, commercial relationships and customer behaviour. While that takes time, it also creates a much stronger foundation for merchants looking to scale.
The biggest challenge has been recognising that there is no such thing as a standard African payments model. Every country has evolved differently. Rather than trying to force every market into the same approach, we’ve built infrastructure that accommodates those differences while presenting merchants with a single API and a consistent operational experience.
That’s what allows businesses to expand more quickly without having to reinvent their payments strategy every time they enter a new market.
What role does mobile money play in Africa’s broader financial inclusion story, and how does Tola’s infrastructure support that?
Mobile Money is one of Africa’s greatest technology success stories.
For millions of people across the continent, a mobile wallet isn’t simply another payment option; it’s their primary financial account. It has transformed access to financial services and created enormous opportunities for businesses to reach customers who may never have had access to traditional banking.
Businesses entering African markets therefore need to meet consumers where they already transact, rather than expecting them to adopt new payment behaviours.
Tola’s infrastructure enables exactly that. We provide businesses with simple access to the mobile money ecosystems consumers already know and trust, while also supporting cards and other local payment methods where appropriate. That helps merchants increase payment acceptance, improve customer experience and participate more effectively in Africa’s rapidly growing digital economy.
What differentiates Tola from other payment infrastructure providers operating in the region?
Many payment providers have built highly successful businesses within individual African markets. The challenge comes when businesses want to operate across the continent, because Africa isn’t a homogeneous payments market.
Infrastructure that works exceptionally well in one country doesn’t automatically translate into another, particularly where payment behaviours, regulation and mobile money adoption differ significantly.
Tola was built from the outset to solve that cross-border complexity. Rather than asking merchants to adapt to the complexities of each local market, we adapt our platform to those markets, giving customers a consistent experience regardless of where they operate.
We’re an infrastructure business focused on payment orchestration rather than simply payment processing. Our platform enables merchants to integrate once and access multiple payment rails across African markets through a single connection, while still benefiting from local direct settlement and payment methods that consumers already trust.
Our focus has always been on making expansion across Africa simpler, faster and more reliable.
AFSIC brings together institutional investors, DFIs, and corporates focused on Africa — what does Tola hope to get out of participating in AFSIC 2026, and what kind of partners or investors are you hoping to connect with?
We’re attending AFSIC because it’s one of the few events that brings together investors, financial institutions, technology companies and businesses that share a long-term commitment to Africa’s growth.
For us, the value lies in building relationships. We’re looking forward to meeting organisations that understand the importance of payments infrastructure in enabling digital commerce across the continent, whether that’s potential enterprise customers, strategic partners or investors.
While we’re not currently raising capital, we’re always interested in engaging with organisations that share our long-term vision for simplifying payments across Africa.
Just as importantly, we’re looking forward to contributing to the conversation around the future of African payments and sharing some of the lessons we’ve learned building infrastructure across one of the world’s most diverse and dynamic payment landscapes.
About AFSIC – Investing in Africa:
AFSIC – Investing in Africa is Africa’s leading investment conference, now in its thirteenth year, connecting investors, businesses, and institutions across the continent’s most dynamic sectors. Held annually in London, AFSIC brings together a global community committed to unlocking investment and driving growth across Africa.
About African Investments Limited:
African Investments Limited, operates two multi award-winning digital platforms, the African Investments Dashboard (www.africaninvestments.ai), connecting global investors with curated, high-quality investment opportunities across Africa, and the Africa Business Opportunities Dashboard (www.businessopportunities.ai), which matches business, trade and investment opportunities across Africa covering all business objectives, products, sectors and countries in Africa.
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