Chad’s Fintech Signals a Shift in CEMAC Liquidity Power

In October 2025, Chad’s Ministry of Finance and the Central African Banking Commission (COBAC) licensed Konoom Mobile Money SA, a private Société Anonyme with XAF 500 million (≈ USD 0.8 million) in paid-up capital, as the first fully Chadian-owned payment institution under CEMAC Regulation No. 04/18/UMAC/COBAC. The license authorizes mobile transfers, merchant payments, and electronic tax settlements but excludes deposit-taking and lending. It establishes a domestically owned operator in a market historically dominated by Orange Money (ORA.PA) and Airtel Africa (AAF.L), which together account for roughly 90 % of mobile-transaction volume across CEMAC according to BEAC 2024 estimates.

CEMAC’s electronic-money float totaled XAF 1.83 trillion (≈ USD 2.9 billion) at end-2024—around 3.2 % of regional M2—almost entirely controlled by foreign telco subsidiaries. Chad’s share was approximately XAF 31 billion (≈ USD 49 million), with adult mobile-money penetration below 10 %. Konoom’s licensing localizes part of that float and signals an incremental regulatory shift toward domestic ownership of digital-payment infrastructure within one of Africa’s most restrictive monetary systems.

For hedge-fund and institutional analysts, the event affects three measurable fronts: float retention, regulatory diversification, and frontier-liquidity formation. In CEMAC, e-wallet balances yield an average 1.8 % effective return, much of which accrues offshore to parent firms in France and the UK. A local operator re-anchors that yield domestically; capturing even 2 % of Chad’s transaction base could retain XAF 400–600 million in local liquidity annually.

Regulatory implications are material. Until now, COBAC had never issued a full payment-institution license to a non-bank, non-telco entity. Konoom’s authorization—filed under RCCM TD-NDJ-01-2025-B14-00004—proves that supranational compliance is achievable without a banking intermediary, creating a replicable model for Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and CAR. For allocators modeling CEMAC fintech exposure, this expands investable counterparties: locally regulated payment institutions (LPI) with minimal foreign-exchange mismatch and higher policy alignment.

Comparables illustrate the pressure this could exert on incumbents. Airtel Africa (AAF.L) trades near 6.2 × EV/EBITDA, and Orange S.A. (ORA.PA) around 4.8 ×, deriving roughly 13 % of consolidated EBITDA from African mobile-money units. If CEMAC adopts LPI licensing more broadly, transaction-fee compression—currently averaging 2.9 % per transfer—and lower float-yield capture could erode regional margins by 50–70 basis points.

Macro context validates the shift. CEMAC M2 expanded 4.7 % y/y in 2024, while private credit/GDP held at 12.5 %. Digital-payment volumes, however, rose 29 % y/y, outpacing deposit growth sixfold. Chad’s move thus represents the formal recognition of fintech as a liquidity-creation channel parallel to banks—a controlled experiment in digital monetary substitution inside a fixed-exchange-rate regime.

Operational risk remains elevated: agent-network density, telco interoperability, and settlement resilience will determine viability. Yet the policy signal is irreversible. By licensing a locally capitalized payment institution, Chad has begun internalizing a fraction of the region’s digital-float economy. For funds tracking frontier-market liquidity structures, the Konoom precedent transforms fintech from a venture narrative into a monetary-policy instrument—small in capital, large in implication.