BCEAO Launches Developer Sandbox for Instant Payments

ITC

Tuesday, 18 November 2025 14:56

BCEAO Launches Developer Sandbox for Instant Payments

The Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has launched a public developer sandbox for its API-Business, allowing Togolese companies and IT solution providers to develop new instant payment solutions.
This testing environment supports the interoperable Instant Payment System (PI-SPI) platform, aiming for transfers in under ten seconds across various financial institutions.
The initiative seeks to reduce deployment times for new digital uses and support the adoption of instant payments across the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU).

The Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has launched a public developer sandbox for its API-Business. This initiative allows Togolese companies and IT solution providers to access a secure environment. This environment supports the development of solutions built around the interoperable Instant Payment System (PI-SPI) platform.

This testing space offers a secure environment to simulate operations, verify technical compliance, and prepare for the integration of instant payments into financial services.

For fintech startups, the sandbox provides technical documentation, integration guides, and assistance. Companies can test merchant payment solutions, cross-border transfer services, or aggregation products linking mobile money, banks, and microfinance. The long-term objective involves reducing deployment times and supporting the adoption of new digital uses within the Union.

The PI-SPI platform, launched in Dakar in September 2025, aims to enable transfers in less than ten seconds between banks, microfinance institutions, and electronic money services. In Togo, seven financial institutions have already committed to the system. Ecobank, Orabank, BOA, Coris Bank, COFINA, Banque Atlantique, and BIAT are preparing the necessary interconnection to support 24/7 instant payments.

This article was initially published in French by R.E.D.

Adapted in English by Ange Jason Quenum

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At the fifteenth position, worldwide, and first in Africa, under the Starting a Business index of the 2020 Doing Business ranking, Togo sustains its reformative dynamics with more reforms….

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