The surge of cross-border payment firms in Africa: Implications for entrepreneurship and SMES

Olatunbosun Onaopemipo Olalekan 1, *, Deborah Oluwadamilola Adeleye 2 and Vivek Kumar Srivastava 3

1 Business Development, Faculty of Management, Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
2 Educational Management, Faculty of Education, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
3 Baikal School of BRICS, Faculty of Business, Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk Oblast, Russia.
 
Review
International Journal of Science and Research Archive, 2024, 13(01), 684–696.
Article DOI: 10.30574/ijsra.2024.13.1.1728
Publication history: 
Received on 06 August 2024; revised on 14 September 2024; accepted on 17 September 2024
 
Abstract: 
This paper looks into the factors surrounding the surge of cross-border payment firms across Africa and their consequences for entrepreneurship and SMEs, underlining the opportunities and challenges brought by these systems. Grounded in a systematic review of available literature, research identifies, among others, key drivers like financial inclusion and the digital economy, while exploring regulatory fragmentation, infrastructure deficits, and cybersecurity risks as main barriers. The findings indicate that, though cross-border payment systems have dramatically improved access to foreign markets and innovation, the benefits for SMEs are not uniform. Targeted interventions, which would require a constitutive policy framework, are urgent for all businesses to be fully joined into the digital economy and hence fully benefit from these financial innovations.
 
Keywords: 
Cross-border payments; SMEs; Entrepreneurship; Financial inclusion; Africa
 
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