EthSwitch, Ethiopia’s national switch owned by public and private banks together with the National Bank of Ethiopia, has launched the country’s National Instant Payment System.
The system uses BPC’s SmartVista platform. It was unveiled at the Ethiopia Digital Payment Conference 2.0 in December 2025 by Dr Eyob Tekalign, Governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia, and Temesgen Tiruneh, Deputy Prime Minister.
EthSwitch now connects 32 banks, 12 microfinance institutions, three payment service operators, and three payment instrument issuers.
It provides card-switch hosting, centralised reconciliation, and card and shared e-wallet services.
The new EthioPay-IPS allows financial institutions to offer real-time account-to-account and wallet-to-wallet transfers, ETHQR payments, alias-based payments, recurring payments, and domestic interoperability.
“Our goal is to provide simple, affordable, secure and efficient digital payment infrastructure to every retail payment provider and through them, to every Ethiopian,”
said Abeneazer Wondwossen, Chief Portfolio Officer at EthSwitch.
“With SmartVista, we have built an interoperable nation-wide ecosystem for instant payments that is locally governed, future-ready and open to innovation.”
EthSwitch selected SmartVista to meet international standards while addressing local needs.
EthioPay-IPS lets members offer interoperable QR payments, payment requests, recurring collections via e-mandates, bulk and trade payments, and a merchant portal with real-time dashboards and reporting.
The system supports secure online and in-app commerce. Customers can pay with cards, QR codes, accounts, wallets, or payment links.
They can also settle utilities, taxes, and government fees through a single national platform.
Digital payment adoption in Ethiopia is growing. Person-to-person transactions more than tripled in 2024/25 to 128 million.
ATM transactions reached 120 million. POS transactions approached three million.
Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Middle East, based on image by wahyu_t via Freepik
