AFIS 2026: African banks must rethink digital transformation, says CR2 CEO

Speaking on the sidelines of the African Financial Industry Summit 2026 in Luanda, Fintan Byrne, ceo of digital banking platform CR2 (now part of Morocco’s HPS Group), argues that African banks are deteriorating market share, that customer expectations are moving towards immediate, cross-border services, which front-end method is showing alarmingly insufficient to figure out the next years of continental financing. GODFREY GEORGE reports.

For the previous years, industrial banks throughout Africa have actually dealt with the launch of a mobile phone application as the conclusive evidence of digital improvement. As nimble fintechs deteriorate market share and customer expectations shift towards immediate, cross-border services, that front-end technique is showing alarmingly insufficient.

Inside the conference room of the Africa Financial Industry Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, market veterans are providing a blunter evaluation: presenting standalone digital applications without upgrading underlying facilities is simply papering over tradition fractures.

“Simply releasing a mobile application does not resolve any issues by itself,” states Fintan Byrne, ceo of CR2. “Innovation for the sake of development, or just presenting another application, does not always provide worth. It needs a thorough program developed around the concern of what worth we are attempting to develop, what issue we are attempting to resolve, and what friction we are attempting to decrease.”

Byrne, an Irish banking software application executive with almost 3 years of experience throughout the international payments landscape– from retail banking and merchant getting to senior functions at card plans like Mastercard– now leads CR2 under the umbrella of Morocco-headquartered international HPS Group

In Between CR2 and HPS, the combined company combines 6 years of payments engineering and serves almost 60 business lending institutions worldwide.

In Africa, that footprint consists of tier-one organizations such as Absa, Standard Chartered Bank, Standard Bank, and Access Bank, in addition to 5 business lending institutions in Egypt, consisting of Commercial International Bank (CIB), and a number of organizations throughout East Africa and Ethiopia.

For Byrne, the predicament dealing with African banking chiefs is twofold: tradition lending institutions need to protect their conventional branch and ATM circulation footprints while all at once purchasing intricate digital abilities to ward off both domestic banking competitors and digital-first fintech insurgents.

The friction test and the platform trap

To separate authentic improvement from digital vanity tasks, Byrne topics every technological release to what he calls the “friction test.”

“I constantly ask my group and the CEOs I engage with to consider what I call the friction test,” Byrne discusses.

“Will the option make something less expensive? Will it conserve somebody cash? Will it be much easier to utilize? Will it conserve time? We require to go through these concerns to comprehend whether the financial investment we are making will provide substantial advantages.”

The structural error lots of African loan providers make, according to Byrne, is buying separated, point-to-point software application options for specific banking functions.

One supplier is worked with for client onboarding, another for loan origination, a 3rd for mobile user interfaces, and a 4th for company banking. The outcome is a pricey, fragmented IT estate that decreases development and irritates clients.

CR2’s counter-strategy concentrates on platformisation: releasing a merged underlying architecture in which abilities can be incrementally turned on, without starting drawn-out core-banking overhauls.

“One of the obstacles dealing with banks is that they buy several specific services without always linking them efficiently,” Byrne states.

“We motivate banks to buy a platform and after that open the abilities they require from that platform. If a bank wishes to establish a particular client journey for onboarding or loan origination, it ought to have the ability to open that ability through the platform without needing to purchase a totally brand-new platform or carry out another combination.”

Where banks have actually performed this shift, the balance-sheet effect has actually been concrete. In North Africa, Byrne indicates Egypt’s CIB, which used channel division to path regular deals far from costly branch networks to self-service digital and assisted channels, thus lowering its functional cost-to-income ratio and speeding up consumer acquisition.

AI in the develop and run stages

While business software application forms the foundation of digital banking, the discussion at AFIS 2026 has actually been controlled by expert system. In markets where approximately 85% of financial activity takes place in the casual economy, the useful application of frontier innovation is frequently fulfilled with scepticism.

When asked how an AI-first banking posture advantages a casual market female offering fish in Luanda or Lagos, Byrne divides the innovation’s lifecycle into 2 unique measurements: the “develop stage” and the “run stage”.

In the develop stage, banks should craft their technical architecture to be machine-readable from the first day, utilizing modern-day application shows user interfaces (APIs) and information pipelines that accommodate emerging paradigms such as agentic commerce– in which self-governing software application representatives make buying and monetary choices on behalf of customers.

The run stage, nevertheless, is where instant industrial worth is opened, especially in credit underwriting and scams avoidance.

“How can AI make organizations more effective in their daily operations?” Byrne asks. “Credit scoring and behavioural scoring are vital locations. You discuss the marketplace female offering fish: how can we much better comprehend her organization capital and operations? Possibly we can utilize that details to supply her with instantaneous credit to support her business. We might likewise comprehend the seasonal nature of her trade and take that into account when evaluating her monetary requirements.”

By replacing classical, unmovable security– such as realty titles– with deal analytics and cash-flow information caught through mobile wallets and firm banking networks, loan providers can lastly finance the continent’s large unbanked and underbanked merchant base.

Most importantly, Byrne argues that this exact same intelligence should be turned external to protect organizations versus intensifying monetary criminal activity. Instead of merely flagging suspicious deals post-mortem, artificial intelligence designs are being released at the facilities level to recognize behavioural abnormalities and anticipate deceptive deals before settlement takes place.

Stablecoins, CBDCs, and orchestration

Beyond credit and scams, African banking organizations are browsing a progressing financial landscape marked by reserve bank digital currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins, and tokenised properties.

Instead of seeing digital currencies as an instant existential hazard to industrial banking, Byrne argues that loan providers should treat them as both shops of worth and payment systems. Organizations must not presume that the increase of digital cash needs tearing down tradition rails.

To discuss the coexistence of brand-new and old payment rails, Byrne utilizes a vehicle parallel.

“When electrical cars and trucks were presented, we did not construct completely brand-new roadways for them,” Byrne observes. “We continued utilizing the existing roadways. We required extra facilities, such as charging stations. The exact same concept uses to digital cash. We can take advantage of existing payment facilities, however extra abilities and financial investments will be required.”

This truth raises the tactical value of payment orchestration– the technical pipes that enables diverse payment rails, card plans, mobile cash wallets, and digital tokens to interoperate efficiently.

As stablecoins gain traction for cross-border trade settlements in currency-starved markets, industrial banks will require robust orchestration platforms to handle on-ramps and off-ramps, making sure that clients can transform fluidly in between sovereign fiat, digital currencies, and bank deposits within a single safe environment.

Trust and security

Throughout the conversations in Luanda, the undercurrent of every technological shift– whether AI, agentic acquiring, or stablecoin rails– stays institutional security.

Without regulative certainty and ironclad cybersecurity, Byrne warns that digital efforts run the risk of disastrous reputational failure, keeping in mind that banking runs under essentially various social and regulative agreements than speculative tech sectors.

“The whole company of banking is constructed on trust,” Byrne notes. “Therefore, any brand-new development or development should be presented with that factor to consider in mind. Security might not be the most interesting topic, however it is essential. Trust is really tough to construct however exceptionally simple to lose.”

Indicating prominent debates and enforcement actions that have actually rocked the wider crypto and exchange sector recently, Byrne worries that standard banking can not pay for the lax compliance postures frequently related to decentralised financing. If a managed industrial bank were to lose billions of dollars in consumer deposits, the systemic contagion and institutional fallout would be existential.

The roadway ahead

Looking towards the next 5 years, Byrne imagines a structural debt consolidation in how African banks engage with innovation suppliers.

The period of bespoke, detached software application experimentation is unwinding, paving the way to business collaborations concentrated on scalability, platform strength, and hyper-personalisation.

As digital adoption develops, the competitive battleground for African lending institutions will centre on dealing with consumers not as broad group classifications, however as unique micro-segments.

“We are moving towards what we generally refer to as a section of one,” Byrne states. “If a bank has a high-net-worth consumer, how does it guarantee that the consumer gets the ideal service, experience, and abilities for their specific requirements? The very same uses to mass-affluent consumers, the mass market, trainees, and individuals who are simply starting their monetary journeys.”

For Byrne, the message to African banking management collected in Luanda is apparent: the organizations that make it through the next years of interruption will not be those that introduce the sleekest standalone mobile applications, however those that purchase the unglamorous, durable platform pipes needed to manage payments, automate intelligence, and secure institutional trust.