The 16 March launch turns a rulebook into a brand customers can use from a feature phone.
On 16 March 2026 Banco de Moçambique presented METIX, the public name of Mozambique’s instant-payment system, with Governor Rogério Zandamela promising service every day of the year, around the clock. According to AIM, the participants are 15 commercial banks, 12 microbanks, the wallets M-Pesa, e-Mola and mKesh, and credit cooperatives authorised by the central bank.
The launch matters because it puts the customer, not the treasurer, at the centre. Personal interbank transfers are free, the service can be reached through a website, mobile apps and USSD menus that need no internet connection, and one instruction can move money between a bank account and a wallet.
Two weeks in, and what launch day added
The rail was running before the ceremony; the ceremony gave it a name and a customer-facing promise.
Press reports differ by a day on when transfers began, with Plataforma Media dating it 2 March and SAPO 3 March. Both name the Sociedade Interbancária de Moçambique (SIMO) as the operator and record daily caps of 200,000 meticais for individuals and 500,000 meticais for organisations, which AIM converts at roughly US$1,130 and US$7,800.
USSD access decides how many people the rail can reach. A wallet holder on a basic handset who dials a menu can now send to a bank account without a smartphone, which matters in a market where wallets outnumber bank accounts nearly four to one: 24.6 million against 6.6 million in November 2025, according to the same reports.
Mechanism: how the switch replaces bilateral links
One hub with 30-odd participants replaces hundreds of possible pairwise agreements.
Without a common hub, every pair of institutions needs its own technical link, its own rules on limits and its own dispute route. With 15 banks, 12 microbanks and three wallet issuers, the pairings run into the hundreds before the cooperatives are counted. A single switch run by SIMO means each participant connects once and inherits access to all the others, with settlement rules that are the same for every pair.
The economic effect is on price and speed together. Free transfers for individuals remove the fee that once nudged a customer to keep money inside one provider’s ecosystem, and immediate availability removes the float that agents and merchants used to carry while waiting for money to arrive.
Where the pressure lands
Card acceptance and agent cash-out are the two businesses closest to the new rail.
Physical infrastructure is already thinning. Reports citing central-bank statistics show ATMs falling from 1,413 to 1,399 and POS terminals from 35,470 to 33,191, while more than 400,000 agents serve wallet customers. A merchant who can be paid by instant transfer from any bank or wallet has less reason to lease a card terminal.
Agents face a subtler shift. Cash-out remains the biggest wallet use, and METIX does not remove the need for cash. It removes one reason for a bank customer to visit an agent to reach a wallet, which shifts agent income toward pure withdrawals and services.
Four numbers to watch, and one action
Migration, coverage, uptime and merchant use will show whether the launch became a habit.
Monitor migration first: the share of personal transfers that shift from wallet-internal and bank-internal channels onto METIX, published by Banco de Moçambique or SIMO. Then coverage: how many of the 30-odd participants are live for both sending and receiving. Third is uptime against the promised 24/7 service, and fourth is merchant acceptance, meaning how many shops post a METIX-capable payment code.
The action for a business is concrete: ask your bank and wallet provider which of your customers can already reach you through METIX, publish the instructions at the till and on invoices, and record how much of the next quarter’s collections arrive by this route. Do not assume the caps suit you: a 200,000 metical limit rules out many wholesale payments.
Sources
- AIM – Agência de Informação de Moçambique. “Banco Central lança sistema de pagamentos instantâneos”. 16 March 2026. https://aimnews.org/2026/03/16/banco-central-lanca-sistema-de-pagamentos-instantaneos/
- Plataforma Media. “Banca moçambicana passa a ter sistema de pagamentos instantâneos”. 2 March 2026. https://www.plataformamedia.com/2026/03/02/banca-mocambicana-passa-a-ter-sistema-de-pagamentos-instantaneos/
- SAPO. “Banca moçambicana passa a ter sistema de pagamentos instantâneos”. 3 March 2026. https://sapo.pt/artigo/banca-mocambicana-passa-a-ter-sistema-de-pagamentos-instantaneos-69a55c1d983f234be8fde221
- Banco de Moçambique. “Estatísticas – Estatísticas”. https://www.bancomoc.mz/pt/areas-de-actuacao/estatisticas/estatisticas/
