EthSwitch is preparing to introduce a merchant portal and a credit scoring framework as part of its next phase of infrastructure development, aimed at deepening payment interoperability and expanding financial inclusion in Ethiopia’s digital financial system.
The national payments switch has already deployed the ETHQR interoperable QR standard and a Request to Pay (RTP) feature within its instant payments ecosystem.
Officials say the upcoming merchant portal is designed to address persistent gaps in payment visibility, settlement confirmation, and reconciliation at the point of sale.
ETHQR, introduced as a unified QR code standard across financial institutions, was intended to reduce fragmentation in merchant payment acceptance.
However, in practice, multiple QR codes are still displayed across many merchant environments.
To complement this, Request to Pay (RTP) was introduced as a real-time payment request mechanism that allows merchants or billers to initiate a payment instruction directly to customers through banks, mobile wallets, and microfinance institutions. The payer then approves the transaction, which is settled instantly through account-to-account transfers.
Despite these tools, officials acknowledge operational friction at merchant level, particularly around payment verification. In some cases, merchants still rely on manual confirmation methods, including photographing payment notifications to verify completion.
The planned merchant portal is expected to function as a centralised digital dashboard for merchants, allowing real-time tracking of incoming payments, instant confirmation of settlement, and improved reconciliation between different payment channels.
Industry definitions of merchant portals describe them as secure digital dashboards that enable businesses to monitor transactions, manage payments, and access reporting tools in real time, reducing dependence on manual verification processes.
The national payments switch is understood to be preparing a pilot deployment of the system in collaboration with Amhara Bank, as part of early-stage implementation before a wider rollout across the banking sector.
The scale of digital payments underpinning this push is expanding. According to the National Bank of Ethiopia’s latest financial stability report, the Ethiopian Automated Transfer System processed more than 3.9 million transactions, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier, with total value exceeding 12 trillion birr, an annual increase of 200 percent, driven largely by the growing number of participants.
Digital financial services transaction values also nearly doubled to more than 18.5 trillion birr.
Separately, the company is also developing a credit scoring system that will draw on transaction-level data generated across the national payments infrastructure. The system is being designed in consultation with the National Bank of Ethiopia, with the core architecture already completed, while integration of an AI-based scoring layer remains the final stage of development, according to people familiar with the process.
The aim is to support data-driven lending decisions by enabling financial institutions to assess creditworthiness based on verified digital payment histories rather than traditional collateral-based models.
The central bank’s report shows that the credit referencing and moveable collateral registry system has improved the efficiency of credit information sharing across the banking sector.
The number of registered borrowers in the credit reference system reached 419,113 by the end of the fiscal year, an increase of 24.5 percent on the previous year. Credit enquiries by banks stood at 350,819 at the end of June 2025, up 37.4 percent year on year.
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