Interswitch taps Temenos to modernise African banking infrastructure
Africa's payments story has run ahead of its banking infrastructure for years. Consumers across the continent move money through mobile wallets and merchant rails with ease, yet the regional banks, microfinance lenders and tier-two credit unions that anchor local economies often remain stuck on rigid, expensive legacy core systems. A new alliance between Temenos and Interswitch Group is aimed squarely at closing that gap.
Announced on 4 June 2026, the collaboration will see Interswitch adopt Temenos technology across core banking, digital banking, payments, wealth management and financial crime. Interswitch will use the platform to provide cloud-hosted and on-premises managed services to banks and financial institutions across the continent, helping them progressively modernise their banking platforms and move toward more customer-centric models.
The service will initially support key African markets including Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Kenya, with further markets to follow. For institutions that have struggled to justify the cost and risk of a full core replacement, a managed-service route delivered by a trusted regional player is a meaningful lowering of the barrier to entry.
"By adopting Temenos' cloud-native, composable platform, Interswitch gains the flexibility and scalability to accelerate its next phase of growth and deliver banking services that meet the evolving needs of the African market," said Jonah Adams, Managing Director for Digital Infrastructure and Managed Services at Interswitch.
The structural logic is sound. Interswitch already sits at the centre of Africa's digital commerce flows, while Temenos (SIX: TEMN) brings the core banking depth that regional institutions lack. Packaging that capability as a managed service, rather than a licence-and-implement project, is well suited to a market where technical talent and capital are both constrained.
The test, as ever, will be execution across diverse regulatory regimes and the pace at which smaller institutions actually migrate. But the direction of travel is clear: the front end of African finance has matured, and the infrastructure underneath it is finally being asked to catch up.
By Pete Sadler
