The Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) has launched an interoperable payments platform developed by the Mojaloop Foundation that enables mobile money transfers between mobile operators Lone Star Cell MTN and Orange Liberia.
The Liberian Inclusive Instant Payments System (IIPS), launched on Tuesday, is a national digital payment platform regulated and supervised by CBL that enables full interoperability between banks, mobile money operators, and other financial service providers, allowing instant and secure transactions across different platforms and institutions.
CBL said that individuals and businesses will be able to use the IIPS to send and receive money in real time between bank accounts, mobile wallets and across service providers.
Liberia has made significant progress in expanding financial access, driven largely by the rapid growth of mobile wallets (with over 11 million wallets currently active in the country). According to the World Bank Global Findex (2024), 52% of Liberians owned an account at the end of 2024.
However, said Miatta Kutteh, director of payment systems at CBL, growth has been hampered by limited interoperability between payments systems, which has forced many citizens to carry two phones (one for MTN and one for Orange) to make transactions.
Consequently, she said, as Liberia’s digital economy continues to expand, the need for a unified, efficient, and inclusive payment ecosystem has become increasingly urgent.
“To remain on par with our neighbours, we knew we needed to fully digitize Liberia’s economy,” Kutteh said. “Interoperability has been one of Liberia’s greatest challenges, especially for rural and underbanked communities.”
The IIPS is meant to solve the persistent challenges of fragmented payment channels, slow transaction processing, and limited interoperability among financial service providers. By connecting all major players on one national platform, the system enhances trust, transparency, and efficiency across the digital payments landscape.
The IIPS – developed by Mojaloop in collaboration with Singapore-based ThitsaWorks and The AfricaNenda Foundation – runs on v17 of Mojaloop’s open-source payments infrastructure.
Mojaloop’s market development director Steve Haley said the Mojaloop platform is a complete, ready to implement product that doesn’t require heavy, up-front investment or years of development. Haley added that the platform took 73 days to deploy to enable government-to-person payments and an extra 38 days to support person-to-person payments.
“This launch proves that Mojaloop is not only cost-effective, but dramatically faster to deploy than traditional systems,” Haley said in a statement.
