Absa Group, one of Africa’s largest diversified financial services providers, has selected Thunes — which describes itself as the Smart Superhighway to move money around the world — as a strategic Multicurrency Clearing (MCC) partner for the Group.

The expanded collaboration builds on the two companies’ recent launch of Absa Global Pay in South Africa, which demonstrated the value of combining Absa’s strong banking franchise and Pan-African reach with Thunes’ global payment connectivity and local-market capabilities. The deepened relationship will now support Absa’s broader cross-border payments strategy across Africa and in global markets.

The announcement lands in a payments landscape where moving money across African borders has traditionally meant navigating a patchwork of local currencies, regulatory regimes, and layered intermediary relationships — friction that adds cost and settlement time for businesses and consumers alike. At the same time, mobile wallets have grown into a mainstream payment rail across much of the continent, meaning cross-border reach increasingly depends on connecting to more than just bank accounts.

Multicurrency Clearing forms a fundamental pillar of Absa’s strategy to deliver greater speed, transparency, and choice in cross-border payments. By linking Absa’s Pan-African banking footprint directly to Thunes’ Direct Global Network — which spans more than 140 countries, 90 currencies, and 220 payment methods — the collaboration enables seamless payouts beyond bank accounts to mobile wallets and card rails, with 24/7 liquidity and enterprise-grade compliance. For a bank whose clients pay and get paid across African markets and international corridors, that combination of currency coverage and last-mile reach is the practical machinery behind the strategy’s promises of speed and choice.

Richard Southey, Managing Executive: Payments as a Service, Absa CIB, said: “Deepening our strategic collaboration with Thunes is a natural evolution of our commitment to delivering intuitive, world-class financial services. Following the success of our Global Pay solution launched with Thunes in South Africa, expanding this collaboration allows Absa to leverage Thunes’ expansive and trusted Network across the continent to extend our cross-border solution, giving our clients unprecedented currency choice, speed, and cost efficiency.”

Daniel Parreira, Senior Vice President, Africa at Thunes, said: “Our initial work with Absa demonstrated the tremendous impact of combining deep local banking relationships with interoperable global payment reach. By extending our collaboration and taking on a strategic Multicurrency Clearing role supporting Absa Group, we are providing the digital infrastructure and liquidity needed to connect African businesses and consumers to global payment ecosystems seamlessly.”

With the expanded mandate, Thunes’ clearing infrastructure is set to support Absa’s push to deliver greater speed, transparency, and currency choice in cross-border payments across its African footprint and global corridors. With the South Africa Global Pay launch as the first proof point, how the multicurrency clearing capability extends across the Group’s Pan-African presence will be an early marker of the partnership’s practical reach.