Mozambique has had, since 2 March, the SPIM — Instant Payment System of Mozambique — an electronic infrastructure created by the Bank of Mozambique (BdM) that allows transfers and payments to be carried out with immediate settlement.
In simple terms, it is a mechanism that ensures that money “arrives instantly” in the beneficiary’s account or wallet. The system operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year, including weekends, public holidays and special leave days, eliminating the traditional clearing windows associated with banking hours.
Like Pix in Brazil or MB Way in Portugal, SPIM is a national retail payment infrastructure in meticais, processed in seconds between different institutions.
A Single Infrastructure for Banks and Mobile Wallets
SPIM brings together commercial banks and Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), such as M-Pesa, e-Mola and mKesh, on a single platform. In practice, it becomes possible to transfer funds instantly between a bank account and a digital wallet — for example, from a bank to M-Pesa and vice versa — without operational delays.
The system sets daily limits of 200,000 meticais for individuals and 500,000 meticais for companies. These limits are defined and implemented by participating institutions, in line with prudential rules and risk-mitigation measures.
Participation in the system is mandatory for licensed banks and EMIs, ensuring full interoperability in the market.
While mobile wallets have gained scale and proximity to the population in recent years, SPIM emerges as a strategic tool for banks to regain prominence.
EMIs captured the market with speed, simplicity and permanent availability. The banking sector, more regulated and dependent on traditional clearing infrastructures, operated in less flexible cycles. With SPIM, this gap disappears: banks can now offer the same instant service under the same 24/7 regime.
The competitive effect is clear. Once interbank transfers occur within seconds, the margin for justifying high fees or operational delays is reduced. Pressure on traditional revenue models is therefore likely to increase.
At the same time, banks gain a tool to integrate — rather than lose — the financial flows circulating through mobile wallets. By enabling full interoperability, SPIM builds bridges between the two systems and makes fragmentation more difficult.
And What Does It Cost?
The issue of cost is, of course, relevant and will be decisive for the system’s success. Although SPIM establishes the infrastructure and the technical framework, pricing policies remain under the responsibility of participating institutions.
According to the adopted model, transfers between banks are free for the end customer. However, transactions between banks and mobile wallets follow the commission structures set by Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) and the banks themselves. This means that the cost may vary depending on the entity involved in the transaction.
In an environment of greater competition and complementarity between banks and EMIs, international trends have shown a reduction in individual transaction fees, offset by higher transaction volumes and the sale of complementary services.
Integration Rather Than Replacement
The new model does not eliminate EMIs but instead blurs the boundary between the banking system and the electronic money system. Mobile wallets cease to operate as closed circuits and become fully connected to the banking network.
For banks, this represents an opportunity to capture deposits originating from mobile wallets and to offer complementary products — such as credit, savings and insurance — to users who previously remained outside the traditional banking system.
The ability to develop real-time treasury management solutions for companies, automatic payment reconciliation and even microcredit linked to digital transaction flows could become a new front of innovation.
Greater Regulatory Visibility
With settlement centralized in an infrastructure supervised by the Bank of Mozambique, transparency over financial flows increases. This strengthens mechanisms for prudential control, anti-money-laundering measures and systemic supervision.
The digitalization of payments therefore becomes more integrated into the formal perimeter of the economy.
Structural Change
SPIM is more than a technological improvement: it represents a strategic movement that repositions the banking sector in the face of the rise of mobile wallets.
By eliminating “time” as a competitive advantage of EMIs, banks definitively enter the logic of instant transactions. The competition is no longer about who is faster — but about who offers better services, lower costs and greater trust.
From now on, customer expectations will be clear: money in seconds, at any time. And the Mozambican financial system will have to respond to this new demand.
SPIM Complements the RTGS
It is worth noting that this modernization by the Bank of Mozambique, in coordination with the national banking sector, did not start now. Since November 2023, the Real-Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) has been operating on an updated platform aligned with international standards and integrated into the SADC regional system, strengthening large-value settlement and liquidity management between accounts at different banks within minutes.
What SPIM does is complete this architecture: while the RTGS — created more than two years ago — ensures the backbone of high-value operations and monetary policy transactions between banks within minutes, the new instant system (operations completed in seconds) brings the same real-time logic to the daily lives of citizens (up to 200,000 meticais) and businesses, for transfers of up to 500,000 meticais.
Together, these two infrastructures consolidate a significant structural transformation of the National Payments System under the leadership of the Bank of Mozambique in coordination with the Mozambican banking sector.
Source: Diário Económico
