Visa, _able, and Onafriq Team Up to Bring Credit Access to African Cardholders

What To Know: 

• Visa, _able, and Onafriq signed a tri-party agreement on August 20, 2026, to expand Visa Flex Credential across Africa and the broader CEMEA region. 
• Many Africans hold a card but cannot borrow against it. The deal allows financial institutions to offer credit options directly through users’ existing debit and prepaid cards, without issuing a separate physical card.
• Onafriq handles processing and network access; _able supplies the credit infrastructure.
• Onafriq is extending its infrastructure by layering credit enablement onto its network of over 1 billion mobile money wallets and 500 million bank accounts.
• Onafriq, in partnership with Circle Mint and Circle Payments Network, also recently expanded its stablecoin settlement rails with USDC.

The Announcement

On August 20, 2026, Visa, credit infrastructure provider _able, and pan-African payments network Onafriq announced a partnership. The deal brings Visa Flex Credential to Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA). 

Visa Flex Credential lets a single card draw from multiple funding sources. In practice, that means a bank could add a credit option to a card a customer already uses for debit or prepaid spending. The typical system often requires financial institutions to issue a separate credit card.

Instead of having separate cards for daily spending and borrowing, users can choose to pay for transactions via their debit balance, a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) line, or a revolving credit option.

Who Does What

The partnership relies on a three-part technical framework to bridge card schemes with local credit markets. 

_able supplies the credit enablement infrastructure. This is what banks actually need to issue and manage credit responsibly. It covers areas such as risk management, portfolio performance, and liquidity optimisation. _able, formerly Credable, is not new to this. Before its rebrand in June 2026, _able helped facilitate an estimated $650 million in loans across the continent.

Visa, the payments giant, provides the Flex Credential technology and its global network. Onafriq handles payment processing for eligible prepaid card implementations and connects participating banks to its pan-African infrastructure.

This infrastructure, Onafriq claims, reaches roughly 1 billion mobile money wallets and 500 million bank accounts in over 40 African countries and 2,000 cross-border payment corridors.

The Gap This Partnership Targets

The African Prepaid and Digital Wallets market is predicted to reach $59.4 billion by 2030. In Nigeria alone, the prepaid card market is expected to reach over $20 billion by 2028. While average card usage on the continent is lower than the global average, millions still use prepaid or debit cards every day.

In 2024, United Bank for Africa reported that it had issued over 10 million cards and set a new goal of 50 million. Despite this, access to formal credit, especially via cards, remains limited in Africa. That gap is what this partnership aims to fix. 

Jad Abbas, Co-Founder and CEO of _able, put it this way: “Most consumers across this region already hold a card, and very few can access credit through it. Visa Flex Credential turns that gap into a channel, and _able provides the infrastructure to activate it responsibly and at scale.” 

Visa’s Senior Vice President and Head of Products and Solutions, CEMEA, Godfrey Sullivan said, “By enabling greater choice in how consumers pay, it can help deepen engagement, unlock new revenue opportunities and drive operational efficiencies.” 

Access to credit is a major problem in Africa and hinders its economic growth. This problem extends beyond retail consumers’ access to credit to the continent’s $100 billion trade finance gap. A gap that many are now attempting to close with Web3 solutions.

A Familiar Pattern for Onafriq

Since 2024, Onafriq has championed card adoption on the continent. It called cards “the true link between alternative stores of value such as mobile money and the global digital economy.”

Onafriq describes the current Visa Flex deal as embodying its purpose. Christian Bwakira, Group Chief Commercial Officer at Onafriq, said, “Creating access and making borders matter less across Africa through payments is what our network is built for.”

But Onafriq is not just passionate about cards. It’s focused on creating a unified payments network, one that doesn’t affect its users’ experience. 

In April 2025, Onafriq partnered with Circle to pilot USDC settlement. By February 2026, it partnered with Conduit for treasury and liquidity management. In early July 2026, Onafriq, alongside Visa and M-Pesa, launched a stablecoin-powered pilot in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

By late July, the company partnered with Privy to build regulated stablecoin infrastructure for its B2B and enterprise customers.

Alongside the Visa Flex move, Onafriq is expanding its stablecoin settlement rails with USDC. In an official announcement made on August 25 with Circle, the company described this move as “the trusted foundation” needed to provide “the settlement option that could move at the speed of the payments they support.”

What It Means for Banks and Users

For banks and card issuers in CEMEA, the appeal is that they ca

n explore offering credit without having to build new lending infrastructure from the ground up. Expanding into retail lending is easier and faster for financial institutions leveraging _able’s risk tools and Onafriq’s processing channels.

Linking credit directly to prepaid and debit cards introduces formal credit options to an underserved market. For the average user, this could mean improved financial inclusion.

​Consumers can access short-term cash flow through their existing card management apps or wallet interfaces.

Financial institutions across CEMEA can now begin exploring Visa Flex Credential deployments on their existing card portfolios through _able’s platform. Rollout will depend on individual issuers and markets.