A Beta Briefing desk
The Settlement Layer
Operational intelligence on African payments, cross-border forex, and the rails moving money across the continent.
Cross-Border Payments Operator
Subscribe to the audio
— a new briefing each weekdayHow to subscribe in your podcast app
- Apple Podcasts
- Library tab → ••• menu → Follow a Show by URL → paste
- Overcast
- + button → Add URL → paste
- Pocket Casts
- Search bar → paste URL
- Castro, AntennaPod, Podcast Addict, Castbox, Podverse, Fountain
- Look for Add by URL or paste into search
Spotify isn't supported yet — it only lists shows from its own directory. Let us know if you need it there.
Recent briefings below
Recent Briefings
The plumbing for autonomous machine commerce is shifting from testnets to institutional adoption today, as South Africa's largest banks integrate with the x402 standard for AI-driven stablecoin paymen…
Francophone Africa is opening up to instant stablecoin settlement as Spendin' rolls out its payment rails across four nations. Also on The Settlement Layer today: Standard Bank officially secures auth…
Today on The Settlement Layer, regulatory momentum is driving the agenda across all three of Africa's primary financial hubs. Nigeria's Central Bank is following up its recent BDC digital tracker roll…
Today on The Settlement Layer: The Central Bank of Nigeria is making a major play to sanitize the country's retail forex market, mandating a real-time digital tracker for all Bureau De Change transact…
Today on The Settlement Layer, the payments landscape is facing a potential earthquake with a reported $53 billion bid for PayPal by Stripe and Advent. Alongside that M&A shockwave, we are looking at …
Today on The Settlement Layer: Central banks and courts are flexing their authority across the continent. Ghana's regulator has abruptly revoked Zeepay's e-money license over compliance failures, whil…
Today on The Settlement Layer, a major but under-the-radar rule change from Visa and Mastercard shortens the payment authorization window to just 25 days, creating new risks for merchants with pre-ord…
Today on The Settlement Layer: The protocol race for autonomous checkout is accelerating. With Visa, Stripe, and Google already deploying agentic commerce tools, Mastercard is now stepping in with ded…
Today on The Settlement Layer: The 'agentic commerce' shift we flagged earlier this month is rapidly gaining infrastructure, with Google, Meta, and Shopify joining the push to build protocols for AI-d…
Today on The Settlement Layer: Direct access to South Africa's national payment rails could soon extend beyond traditional banks. The central bank's Prudential Authority is actively pushing to let ret…