Ethiopia's Payment Service Operator Licensing Explained

If you're building or integrating a payment flow for an Ethiopian business in 2026, the regulatory ground has shifted under your feet — in a good way, if you know what to look for. Ethiopia has launched a National Digital Payment Strategy for 2026–2030, alongside a new instant payments platform and formal licensing categories for payment providers.

What's actually changed

The National Bank of Ethiopia's Payment System Operator (PSO) directive introduced formal licensing categories for companies that provide payment infrastructure — including Payment Gateway Operators, the category that covers merchant-facing payment gateways like Chapa, ArifPay, SantimPay and Kacha. The wider National Digital Payment Strategy (2026–2030) sets a five-year roadmap focused on interoperability, public trust and innovation.

In parallel, Ethiopia's digital finance sector has formed a new trade body, with board representation including Chapa Financial Technologies alongside other established players — a sign the sector is organising itself as it scales.

The scale this is trying to keep up with

Telebirr alone now has over 60 million users and processed 4.19 trillion birr in transactions in the 2025/26 fiscal year. Ethio Telecom has extended Telebirr into new use cases too — including RFID-powered digital toll payments on the Addis Ababa–Adama Expressway. Mobile money in Ethiopia has moved well past early adoption into core national infrastructure.

That scale comes with real risk. A majority of Ethiopian banks — 28 of 31 — have reported being hit by fraud, including SIM-swap attacks against mobile money accounts and at least one large-scale fintech scam. Formal PSO licensing is, in part, a response to that: a way to give businesses and consumers a clearer signal about which payment providers meet a regulatory bar.

What this means if you're integrating payments

• Check a payment provider's current PSO licensing status before building a dependency on it — this is now a real, checkable regulatory fact, not just a reputation question.
• Design for the fraud patterns actually hitting the Ethiopian market — SIM-swap risk on mobile money accounts, in particular — rather than only defending against generic card-fraud patterns from other markets.
• If you're building e-commerce or point-of-sale software, plan for e-invoicing compliance (Directive No. 1142/2026) alongside payment integration — the two regimes are arriving at the same time and touch the same transaction data. See our e-invoicing guide for the detail.

How Bright IT Solutions helps

We integrate Telebirr, Chapa, CBE Birr and other Ethiopian payment rails into websites, POS systems and custom software via our API integration work — building with current PSO licensing and fraud patterns in mind, not a generic international payments checklist adapted after the fact.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Payment System Operator (PSO) licence?

It's a formal licence category from the National Bank of Ethiopia for companies providing payment infrastructure. Payment Gateway Operators — the category covering merchant payment gateways such as Chapa, ArifPay, SantimPay and Kacha — is one of several categories the PSO directive introduced.

Do I need my own PSO licence to accept payments on my website?

Generally no — most businesses integrate through an already-licensed payment gateway rather than becoming a licensed operator themselves. The licensing question matters most when choosing which gateway provider to build on.

How do I check if a payment provider is currently licensed?

Confirm directly with the National Bank of Ethiopia or the provider itself before committing to an integration. Licensing status, categories and requirements are still evolving under the 2026–2030 strategy, so this is worth checking at the time you build, not relying on older information.