Pan-African payments aggregator PawaPay has been granted a Payment Service Provider (PSP) licence by the Bank of Mozambique through its local subsidiary, Quidexplus Mozambique.
The authorisation makes PawaPay one of the first companies to be licensed to operate as a PSP in Mozambique, giving merchants a regulated route into one of Africa’s most active mobile money markets.
The licence allows PawaPay to onboard merchants directly in Mozambique and provide regulated payment services across the country.
Mozambique’s mobile money market now exceeds 12 million active accounts across three operators: M-Pesa (Vodacom), E-Mola (Movitel) and mKesh (Tmcel).
Until now, limited licensed payment infrastructure has restricted how merchants operate at scale in the market.
“Mozambique has been one of the most active mobile money markets on the continent for years, but merchants have had no reliable way to operate here at scale,” says Ilídio Matchebe, Mozambique country director at PawaPay. “Becoming one of the first PSPs licensed by the Bank of Mozambique changes that. We can now onboard merchants directly and connect them to the operators their customers already use day to day.”
The Mozambique licence sits alongside PawaPay’s existing regulated presence across 23 African markets, where the company processes around 7 million transactions a day for customers operating in sectors including ride-hailing, remittance, retail and NGOs.
The licence enables PawaPay to begin commercial operations immediately, with merchant onboarding expected to begin in the coming days.
The company is also in advanced discussions with M-Pesa, E-Mola and international remittance providers around expanding inbound payment flows into Mozambique.