Payments in Africa are not one problem. They are many problems stitched together: different currencies, different mobile money operators, different regulatory requirements per country, and a consumer base that overwhelmingly prefers mobile money over cards.
If you're running a SaaS product and you want to collect money from African users, the provider you choose will shape almost everything: which countries you can sell in, how you get paid, who handles tax compliance, and whether your users can actually complete a transaction without dropping off.
I've worked with most of these providers across different products and markets. Here's what I've learned.
What to Consider Before Choosing
Before diving into specific providers, there are a few structural questions you need to answer. These will narrow your options fast.
Do you have a local entity? Some providers require you to register a business in the country where you want to collect payments. If you don't have one (and most international SaaS companies expanding into Africa don't), that rules out certain options or forces you to work through a merchant of record.
Who is your target audience? If you're selling to developers or tech workers who have Visa or Mastercard, card payments might work. If you're selling to the broader consumer market, you need mobile money. In Kenya, M-Pesa dominates. In Nigeria, bank transfers and cards are more common. In francophone West Africa, Orange Money and MTN Mobile Money are the standard.
Where do you want to settle? Some providers settle funds locally in African currencies. Others can settle internationally in USD, EUR, or GBP. If you're a company based outside Africa, settling abroad matters a lot for your treasury operations.
Do you need recurring billing? This is a big one. Most mobile money systems do not support auto-debit. The user has to approve every single payment manually. That means the classic SaaS model of "charge the card on file every month" simply doesn't work for mobile money users. You'll need to rethink your billing model around manual renewals, prepaid plans, or payment reminders. Spotify figured this out in Kenya: they offer prepaid plans via M-Pesa where users pay upfront for a set period and the subscription doesn't auto-renew.
Tax compliance. Every African country has its own VAT rules, digital service tax rules, and reporting requirements. If you're the seller of record, you're responsible for all of it. If you work with a merchant of record, they handle it for you.
With that context, here are the providers worth knowing about.
Paystack
Paystack is the default payment gateway for most tech companies operating in Africa. It was founded in Nigeria, acquired by Stripe in 2020, and is now live in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Cote d'Ivoire, with early access programs in Egypt and Rwanda.
The product is excellent. The API is clean, the documentation is solid, and the dashboard is well designed. If you've used Stripe, Paystack will feel familiar. It supports card payments, bank transfers, USSD, and mobile money (including M-Pesa in Kenya). For recurring billing on cards, it works well. Local transaction fees in Nigeria are 1.5% + NGN 100. International transactions are 3.9% + NGN 100.
The catch: you need a registered business entity in one of the countries where Paystack operates. If you're a European or American SaaS company without a Nigerian or Kenyan entity, you can't just sign up and start collecting payments. You'll need to incorporate locally first, which takes time, costs money, and creates ongoing compliance obligations.
Paystack is also not a merchant of record. You are the legal seller. That means you handle tax compliance, chargebacks, and regulatory reporting yourself.
Best for: Companies that already have (or are willing to set up) a local entity in one of Paystack's markets and want a reliable, developer-friendly payment gateway.
Startbutton
Startbutton solves the problem that Paystack doesn't: it acts as a merchant of record for digital products across Africa. That means Startbutton becomes the legal seller of your product in each market. They handle local payment collection, tax compliance, regulatory requirements, and currency conversion. You don't need a local entity.
They currently serve over 200 merchants across 35 African countries, covering sectors like SaaS, gaming, travel, and e-commerce. Their client list includes some well-known African tech companies like Paystack itself (for specific use cases), AltSchool Africa, and Wakanow.
The value proposition is straightforward: you integrate once, and Startbutton handles the complexity of selling digital products across multiple African markets. They connect to local payment methods in each country, manage compliance, and settle to you in your preferred global currency.
The tradeoff is that you're adding a layer between you and your customer. You lose some control over the payment experience, and merchant of record fees are typically higher than payment gateway fees because you're paying for the compliance and legal infrastructure, not just the payment processing.
Best for: International SaaS and digital product companies that want to sell across multiple African markets without setting up local entities or dealing with per-country tax compliance.
pawaPay
If your users pay with mobile money (and in most of sub-Saharan Africa, they do), pawaPay is purpose-built for that. They connect directly to mobile network operators across 20+ African markets through a single API. No card payments, no bank transfers. Just mobile money, done exceptionally well.
What makes pawaPay different from other mobile money aggregators is their direct-to-wallet architecture. Instead of sitting on top of other aggregators, they connect directly to each mobile money operator. That gives them better visibility into transaction status, fewer points of failure, and higher success rates. They report over 2 billion successful transactions with zero chargebacks (mobile money requires user confirmation on every payment, so chargebacks essentially don't exist).
For settlement, pawaPay offers real flexibility. You can settle in local currency to a local bank account, or in global currencies (USD, EUR, GBP) to an international bank account. Settlement frequency is configurable: on-demand, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. This makes pawaPay particularly attractive for companies based outside Africa that want to collect mobile money payments without needing a local bank account.
They currently operate in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Best for: Companies (especially those based outside Africa) that need reliable mobile money collection across multiple markets with international settlement.
Google Play Billing
If your product is a mobile app distributed through Google Play, this is worth considering for specific markets. In Kenya, Google Play accepts M-Pesa as a payment method. Users can link their M-Pesa account to Google Play and pay for apps, in-app purchases, and subscriptions directly from their mobile money wallet.
In South Africa, Google Play works well with local card payments, which are more common there than in the rest of the continent.
The advantage is that Google handles everything: payment collection, currency conversion, tax compliance (Google is the merchant of record for app store purchases). You just build your app, set your prices, and let Google handle the rest.
The downsides are significant though. Google takes a 15-30% commission on all transactions. You're locked into Google's billing system and policies. And you're limited to app-based products. If you're running a web-based SaaS with no mobile app, this isn't an option.
For mobile-first products targeting Kenyan consumers, though, it's worth considering as part of a broader payment strategy. The M-Pesa integration means your app is accessible to a much wider audience than card-only payment would allow.
Best for: Mobile app developers who want a zero-setup payment solution for Kenya (via M-Pesa) and South Africa (via cards), and are willing to accept Google's commission.
Boku
Boku is a global mobile payments company that works at a very different scale than the others on this list. Their clients are companies like Apple, Google, Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Sony, and Tencent. They provide two main services: direct carrier billing (charges appear on the user's phone bill or are deducted from prepaid airtime) and local payment methods including mobile wallets.
Their network reaches over 7.5 billion consumer payment accounts across 60+ countries, with over 200 local payment methods available through a single integration.
In Africa specifically, Boku has been expanding through telco partnerships. Their carrier billing product is interesting because it lets users pay for digital content by charging it to their mobile phone bill. No wallet, no bank account, no card needed. The user just confirms the purchase and it's deducted from their prepaid balance or added to their postpaid bill.
The reality, though, is that Boku is built for very large merchants. Their entire business model revolves around enterprise partnerships with the world's biggest digital content companies. If you're a startup or a mid-size SaaS company, Boku is likely not going to be the right fit. Their onboarding, pricing, and integration are designed for companies processing high volumes across many countries.
Best for: Large-scale digital content and subscription companies (think streaming services, app stores, gaming platforms) that need carrier billing and local payment methods across multiple continents, including Africa.
So Which One Should You Pick?
It depends on three things: where you're incorporated, who your users are, and how many markets you need to cover.
If you have a local entity and want the best payment gateway in one or two African markets, start with Paystack. It's the closest thing Africa has to Stripe, and for good reason.
If you're based outside Africa and don't want to incorporate locally, Startbutton as a merchant of record or pawaPay for mobile money collection are your best options. Startbutton handles the full compliance layer. pawaPay gives you deep mobile money coverage with international settlement.
If you're building a mobile app and want the simplest possible setup, Google Play Billing handles everything in Kenya and South Africa, though you'll pay for that convenience with Google's commission.
If you're Netflix-sized, talk to Boku.
And remember the recurring billing constraint. If your users are paying with mobile money, auto-renewal subscriptions will not work. Build your billing model around that reality from day one. Offer prepaid plans with different durations. Send payment reminders before expiry. Make it easy for users to manually renew. The companies that succeed in Africa are the ones that adapt to how people actually pay, not the ones that try to force a Western billing model onto a fundamentally different payment infrastructure.