PawaPay has been granted a Payment Service Provider licence by the Bank of Mozambique through its local subsidiary Quidexplus Mozambique.
The authorisation makes PawaPay one of the first firms licensed as a PSP in Mozambique and allows it to onboard merchants directly and provide regulated payment services.
Ilídio Matchebe, Mozambique Country Director at PawaPay, said merchants have had no reliable way to operate at scale and the new licence changes that.
Mozambique’s mobile money market contains more than 12 million active accounts across three operators – M-Pesa run by Vodacom, e-Mola run by Movitel and mKesh run by Tmcel – and the Bank of Mozambique counted 24.6 million mobile money accounts at the end of November 2025, almost four times the 6.7 million bank accounts.
PawaPay, founded in 2020, offers a single API that connects businesses to mobile-money wallets in 23 African countries and processes about seven million transactions a day, totalling 3.5 billion since launch.
The company received a Central Bank of Kenya licence for its subsidiary Quidexplus Kenya Limited in September, listed among 44 licensed PSPs in the CBK directory dated August 10, 2026, with its first licence dated June 17, 2026 and David Kanyora as chief executive.
PawaPay expects merchant onboarding in Mozambique to begin in the coming days and says commercial operations can start immediately.
It is in advanced discussions with M-Pesa, e-Mola and international remittance providers to expand inbound payment flows into Mozambique.
Mozambique’s payment framework was updated by Law 15/2026 of July 2, 2026, which placed licensing and supervision of all payment operators with the Bank of Mozambique; PawaPay’s licence falls under the payment-aggregator category.
The licence also changes the party merchants sign with, allowing them to contract with a locally licensed company that answers to the Bank of Mozambique; PawaPay’s developer documentation already lists Mozambique with M-Pesa and e-Mola (payouts only), while mKesh is not yet listed.
