Africa’s cross border payments remain tangled by fragmented rails, volatile currencies, and complex licensing. Verto’s new Atlas Suite promises a single API to handle local accounts, FX, and compliant payouts across 49 currencies and over 100 countries. The goal is simple, give fintechs and platforms instant access to banking grade infrastructure without stitching together multiple providers or chasing local licences.
Verto is not new to this challenge. We have covered the company’s work enabling SME trade flows and its recent recognition in global fintech circles, signalling real momentum behind its B2B model.
What Atlas actually offers
Atlas bundles Verto’s banking, FX and payments stack so teams can embed money movement with one integration.
- Local virtual accounts in more than 12 markets, with collections in domestic rails.
- Always on FX with deep liquidity across 49 currencies, including those often considered exotic.
- Cross border payouts to 100 plus countries, via bank transfer or mobile money, with funds landing in the business’s name.
- Sub accounts for customers and a centralised treasury layer to orchestrate flows, compliance, and reconciliation.
- Support for last mile, high volume disbursements, useful for remittances and payroll.
Two tracks make this relevant to very different teams.
For fintechs and banks
Financial institutions can embed Verto’s infrastructure directly, then offer customers local accounts, instant FX, and global payouts without building core banking or securing multiple local permissions. The play here is speed to market and lower operational overhead.
For platforms and marketplaces
Non financial platforms, think ecommerce, travel, logistics, can turn on payments, banking and FX as native features. White label brokers can also run Africa focused financial services under their own brand, including setting their FX markup to create new revenue, while Verto handles the heavy lifting on compliance and operations.
Triply, a Kenya based travel tech platform, is already using Atlas to embed cross border payments for customers that operate across multiple currencies and markets.
Why this matters now
Businesses across Africa are expanding regionally, yet still face the tax of moving value between mobile money, bank rails and international corridors. We have tracked adjacent moves that point to the same direction, from Onafriq building dense corridors with PAPSS to telco APIs opening up better on ramps for collections and payouts. Atlas adds another option for developers and finance teams who prefer one vendor for accounts, FX and payouts.
Macro tailwinds also help. Digital payments at scale and rising remittances continue to push for interoperable, compliant rails. Our earlier analysis showed cross border payments are a pillar of Africa’s digital economy story through 2030.
Competitive context and questions to ask
The embedded finance race in Africa is heating up. API first players are targeting specific pain points, while banks and card networks are modernising infrastructure and compliance paths. Recent funding and product announcements in stablecoin compatible rails add further optionality for enterprises that need programmable settlement. Atlas will compete on coverage, uptime, FX spreads, API quality and the depth of regulatory permissions per market.
If you are evaluating Atlas, consider the following:
- Licensing footprint per country. What permissions power collections, FX, and payouts in each market.
- Settlement times and cut-offs. Are they truly instant between supported currencies, and what happens for less liquid pairs.
- Developer experience. Documentation depth, webhook reliability, idempotency, sandbox realism, and client libraries.
- Treasury controls. Limits, approvals, multi user roles, and audit logs for regulated workflows.
- FX transparency. Live rates, markup policies, and disclosures for your customers.
- Dispute and compliance handling. KYC, KYB, sanctions screening, and how edge cases are resolved.
How this fits Verto’s trajectory
Atlas reads like a natural extension of Verto’s push to simplify trade and payments for SMEs and enterprises. The company has been vocal about serving emerging markets with hard to access currencies and rails. Earlier Techish coverage captured that focus and the milestones it has hit. Expect Atlas to knit those capabilities into an embeddable product for teams that do not want to be payments companies, yet need payments to work natively.
