Cross-border payments across Africa remain costly and complex, with businesses paying an average of 7.4 to 8.3 percent in transaction fees, more than double the global benchmark of 3 percent set under the Sustainable Development Goals for affordable cross-border payments. For companies operating across multiple African markets, managing international payments often requires juggling between four and ten different payment platforms or integrations to support multiple currencies and corridors.
For finance teams, this fragmentation has turned treasury management into a daily operational challenge. Payment data is scattered across multiple systems, making real-time visibility into transaction data difficult and reconciliation slow and manual. As a result, answering a simple but critical question of where our money is right now has become increasingly complex for businesses operating across borders.
Bluebulb, the B2B cross-border payments company has announced plans to launch Orbita, a self-service treasury platform designed specifically for African businesses managing global payment operations. Orbita is built to give finance teams, treasurers, and chief financial officers greater control, visibility, and efficiency across their cross-border treasury activities.
Unlike traditional payment tools that focus primarily on transaction execution, Orbita places treasury management at the centre of the cross-border payments experience. The platform enables businesses to fund digital wallets, convert funds into preferred currencies, settle with international vendors, and track global payments from a single unified dashboard. By consolidating these activities into one platform, Orbita removes the fragmentation that has long characterised cross-border payments for African businesses.
According to Ola Daramola, Group Chief Executive Officer of Bluebulb, Orbita was built out of a deep understanding of the operational realities finance and treasury teams face when managing cross-border payments at scale.
As African businesses scale beyond their home markets, the complexity around currencies, settlement cycles, and visibility increases fast. We built Orbita to give finance leaders clarity, control, and confidence over how money moves across borders, in real time. This for us is about doing the long, disciplined work of building payment infrastructure African businesses can rely on as they compete and scale globally.
The launch of Orbita reinforces Bluebulb’s positioning not just as a payments provider, but as a company focused on building critical financial infrastructure for African businesses participating in global trade. By addressing longstanding challenges around visibility, reconciliation, and control, Bluebulb aims to support more efficient treasury operations and reduce the operational friction that has historically slowed cross border commerce across the continent.
About Bluebulb
Bluebulb is a global payment and treasury management company specializing in instant cross-border payment solutions for African businesses. The company provides T+0 settlements to the USA, UK, and EU, with T+1 settlements to China.
For more information about Bluebulb’s instant global payment solutions, visit www.bluebulb.co.uk or contact the company directly.
