Crypto and African banks have spent years eyeing each other from opposite sides of the room — and understandably so. In Nigeria, banks have had a difficult relationship with crypto exchanges and traders, including the central bank's 2021 ban on crypto accounts. Few would have expected one of South Africa's biggest banks to eventually put Bitcoin on its investment menu. That is exactly what has now happened.

South Africa's FNB launches crypto trading for its customers

First National Bank (FNB), a South African bank with $50 billion in assets, has added crypto trading to its share trading platform through the local crypto exchange VALR. Customers can buy and sell five assets — Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana and USDT, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar — from R10 ($0.6).

There is a catch: FNB has placed crypto in a glass box. Customers can buy and sell the assets within FNB, but cannot transfer them to another exchange or to their own crypto wallets. They also cannot move crypto assets in from external wallets. The bank said users can access their cryptocurrencies through FNB's Share Saver, Share Builder, Share Investor and Share Zero — investment products that let customers buy and manage shares and other investments through FNB.

Compared with Nigeria or even Kenya, South Africa has taken a less restrictive stance towards crypto. The country's regulatory journey began in 2022, when it declared cryptocurrencies to be financial products under its existing Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act rather than creating a separate rule for digital assets — putting crypto under the same licensing umbrella as the rest of its financial system. Over the years, it has licensed more than 200 crypto businesses, giving banks the confidence to work with those operators. While it took South African banks a while to get here, that confidence is now spreading across the industry. In September, Absa, the country's third-largest bank by assets, said it now offers crypto custody services, opening the door to crypto-linked treasury services for corporate and institutional clients.

South Africa may still be grappling with other industry questions, such as whether Bitcoin is cash or capital, and how it should treat crypto assets used for cross-border payments, but that is not stopping banks from having their crypto cake and eating it too. The winners will be crypto infrastructure businesses that position themselves as gateways, helping banks serve crypto-based clients who were previously locked out of the formal banking system. The crypto firm Luno, for example, jointly issues the ZARU stablecoin with financial institutions such as Sanlam and Lesaka, while Discovery Bank offers crypto trading services through Luno. Now, VALR is playing that role in FNB's crypto business.

Banks are cautious businesses. Absa, for example, has had digital-asset hires for years and plans to offer crypto services. But many banks are unlikely to build the full stack themselves, creating an opening for crypto infrastructure companies to become the trusted middle.

Starlink's Kenya growth is running into capacity limits

In April, Starlink, the Elon Musk-owned satellite internet company, stopped taking on new residential customers in eight Kenyan counties for a fourth month, saying it was running at limited capacity. Three months later, that has not changed. Prospective users in Nairobi, Kiambu, Mombasa, Machakos, Murang'a, Kirinyaga, Kwale and Kilifi are being sent to a waiting list because the network has run out of capacity in those areas.

Starlink had 27,616 fixed internet subscriptions by June, up 58.5% from a year earlier. Yet it still controlled only 1% of Kenya's 2.84 million fixed internet connections. The small national share hides a more local problem: too many customers are trying to use Starlink in the same places.

Kenya has been here before. Starlink froze sign-ups around Nairobi from November 2024 until June 2025 after demand overwhelmed capacity. Its subscriptions fell from 19,146 in December 2024 to 17,066 three months later, then barely moved before the restrictions were lifted. Growth resumed afterwards, helped by cheaper hardware, rentals and lower-priced plans.

Starlink's constraint is not demand across Kenya, but where that demand is concentrated. Its satellites have limited capacity over each area, so adding more customers in places like Nairobi and Mombasa can slow service for everyone already connected. The pressure was visible before the freeze: average download speeds had fallen 26% year-on-year to 34.55 megabits per second (Mbps) by March, according to checks by the local publication BusinessDaily. Stopping new sign-ups protects existing customers while Starlink adds capacity.

Kenya shows one limit of using satellite internet as an urban alternative to fibre. Starlink works especially well where customers are spread out and laying fibre is expensive. Dense cities reverse that advantage: many users compete for limited satellite capacity, while fibre operators can add capacity on the ground. Repeated freezes give those local rivals more room to keep customers Starlink cannot currently take.

Airtel Money takes on M-PESA with a virtual card

Airtel Money is taking its fight with M-PESA beyond sending money and bill payments. The mobile money provider plans to launch a Mastercard virtual card in Kenya, allowing customers to pay on international websites directly from their Airtel Money wallets. No launch date has been announced.

The Airtel Money Global Pay Card will work on sites that accept Mastercard, including Amazon, eBay and digital subscription services. Customers fund the card from their Airtel Money balance and can move unused money back into the wallet. Safaricom, which operates M-PESA, has offered a similar service, M-PESA GlobalPay, with Visa since 2022.

Airtel is closing a gap in what its wallet can do. Mobile money is synonymous with how people pay domestically in Kenya, but many international websites and payments still require a card. A virtual card gives Airtel Money customers card details without needing a bank account or a physical card, letting them connect a local wallet to Mastercard's global payment network.

Airtel Money does not need to beat M-PESA everywhere to make this useful. Its share of Kenyan mobile money subscriptions has risen from 2.8% in June 2023 to 11.1% by June 2026, while M-Pesa's share has fallen from about 97% to 88.8%. Giving customers more reasons to keep money in Airtel Money could help turn it from a cheaper second wallet into one they use more often.

Kenya's mobile money battle is moving from access to utility. With 55.4 million M-PESA users, future growth depends on what each wallet lets customers do. International shopping, subscriptions and other online payments are becoming another front in that competition.

Gauteng puts e-hailing licences online

Anyone who has dealt with government paperwork knows the drill: long queues and a lot of forms. In Gauteng — South Africa's most populous province, home to Johannesburg and Pretoria — the transport department hopes to fast-track that process by moving it online.

The Gauteng Provincial Government has launched the Gauteng Public Transport Regulatory Information System, a digital platform for processing public transport operating licences. The province said the system should help clear a backlog of operating-licence applications dating back to 2009.

E-hailing is front and centre. The transport department has put e-hailing drivers near the front of the queue. Kedibone Diale-Tlabela, Gauteng's Transport member of the executive council (MEC), said the department wants e-hailing operators to come forward, apply for licences and regularise themselves.

In September 2025, South Africa introduced amendments to the National Land Transport Act that mandated ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Bolt to secure e-licences. The platforms must register, while individual drivers need their own operating licences to carry passengers for money. The licence specifies where a driver can pick up passengers, and drivers also need professional driving permits, panic buttons and branded vehicles under the new laws.

The new system is meant to make the licensing process faster and easier to track, while helping the province work through its backlog and improve compliance. It also aims to reduce illegal public transport operations, improve safety and ease friction between e-hailing drivers and the traditional taxi industry. Though the digital system will not magically solve those tensions, it gives the government a way to know which drivers are licensed, where they are located and where they are allowed to operate, as the Transport Act stipulates.

Also making headlines

• The Loveworld Trade and Investment Forum (LTIF) 2026, a two-day business and investment summit, is convening founders, investors, policymakers and business leaders in Accra, Ghana, on October 6 and 7. Held at the Ohene Konadu Auditorium at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), the forum focuses on trade, investment, production and how African businesses can build stronger economic links across the continent.
• WAEMU's free-transfer rule could make cash withdrawals more expensive.
• The strategy behind Equity Bank's new digital wallet.
• Egypt's CIB to invest up to EGP 2bn in MNT-Halan share offering.

This article is based on TechCabal Daily – Banks want their crypto cake, written by Yemi Kareem and Emmanuel Nwosu and edited by Emmanuel Nwosu and Ganiu Oloruntade.