Interswitch, one of Africa’s absolute titans in integrated payments and digital commerce, has announced a landmark partnership with Geneva-headquartered banking software giant Temenos. The deal signals Interswitch’s definitive entry into the hyper-competitive African core banking technology market, positioning the fintech pioneer to capture a larger slice of banks’ massive IT spending.
Under the terms of the agreement, Interswitch will integrate Temenos’ cloud-native, composable banking platform into its infrastructure. This will allow Interswitch to offer both cloud-hosted and on-premises managed services to financial institutions. The suite covers critical banking components: core banking, digital banking, payments, wealth management, and financial crime mitigation.
Historically renowned for its consumer-facing brands like Quickteller and its domestic card scheme, Verve (which recently crossed 100 million issued cards), Interswitch is aggressively expanding beyond simple payment processing.
The move arrives at a critical juncture. Across Africa, legacy financial institutions are facing immense pressure to modernise ageing IT systems to keep up with agile neobanks and changing regulatory demands. However, full-scale core upgrades are notoriously expensive and complex. For perspective, just six Nigerian commercial banks spent a combined ₦268.7 billion ($171.5 million) on IT infrastructure and core upgrades in a single year.
By utilizing Temenos’ technology, Interswitch aims to act as a full-service digital transformation partner. Banks will effectively be able to rent or scale modern banking infrastructure as a managed service, bypassing the steep operational hurdles of building it from scratch.
“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 & Managed Services (Systegra) at Interswitch. “Our partnership with Temenos allows us to introduce a highly configurable banking platform that leverages the latest cloud technologies into our technology stack.”
The financial stakes for controlling Africa’s underlying financial rails are incredibly high. According to market data from Mordor Intelligence, the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) and digital banking market in the Middle East and Africa is projected to skyrocket to $27.10 billion.
Interswitch’s entry into this segment sets up an intense battle with entrenched technology distributors on the continent. For years, players like CWG Plc have dominated the space through partnerships with global firms like Infosys to supply the popular Finacle core banking application to tier-1 lenders.
Concurrently, global software vendors have faced recent friction in the region; Temenos itself lost a notable client in Nigeria’s Sterling Bank when the lender migrated to a custom-built, domestic core banking application called SEABaaS. Partnering with Interswitch which already supports over 300 financial institutions across 32 African nations gives Temenos a deeply rooted distribution engine to reclaim and expand its market share.
The collaborative managed services will initially target foundational African banking hubs, including:
• Nigeria
• Ghana
• Kenya
• Côte d’Ivoire
By combining Temenos’ specialized global software capabilities with Interswitch’s extensive local footprint and infrastructure reliability, the alliance is well-positioned to accelerate the digitization of African finance, making scalable, cloud-native banking the new baseline for the continent.
