Interswitch, the Nigerian company best known for moving money around Africa, is pushing further into the business of running banks themselves.
The Lagos-based payments group has struck a partnership with Temenos, a Swiss banking-software firm, to offer managed digital-banking services to banks and other financial institutions across the continent. The deal was announced on 4 June 2026.
Under the agreement, Interswitch will use Temenos technology, spanning core banking, digital banking, payments, wealth management and financial-crime tools, to run banking platforms on behalf of its clients, either in the cloud or on an institution’s own servers. The service will start in Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya before expanding.
From payments to the banking stack
The move takes Interswitch up the stack, from processing payments to operating the software that banks run on. For lenders, the appeal is outsourcing the cost and complexity of modernising ageing systems to a partner that already plugs into much of Africa’s payments plumbing.
“This is a pivotal moment for Interswitch as we accelerate our expansion beyond payments and reimagine digital banking for Africa,” said Jonah Adams, managing director for digital infrastructure and managed services at Interswitch. He said the Temenos platform gave the company the flexibility “to scale our services across the continent”.
A widening footprint
Interswitch operates in 32 African countries and supports more than 300 financial institutions. Its Quickteller platform handles consumer and merchant payments, while its Verve card scheme recently passed 100 million cards issued. The company has steadily broadened its remit over the years, from card processing into areas such as health technology.
Africa’s banking-technology market is increasingly contested, with local players and global vendors alike chasing lenders that want to modernise without building everything in-house, a shift also visible in deals like Brass folding its business banking into Paystack. For Interswitch, managed banking services are a way to deepen ties with the institutions it already serves, and to sell them more than payments.
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