Yaoundé: TECHzMagazine – News Desk
The Bank of Central African States (BEAC) has officially launched SYSTAC 2, an advanced electronic clearing house designed to overhaul the retail payments infrastructure across the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC).
Initiated in 2023 and developed over a four-year period, the new centralized system officially went live on August 3, 2026, with BEAC Governor Yvon SANA BANGUI formally announcing its debut from Yaoundé, Cameroon, on August 12. SYSTAC 2 replaces a legacy clearing platform operational since 2007, which had reached its limits amidst rapid technological innovation and market growth.
Serving Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon, BEAC mandated a single, region-wide cutover to eliminate historical fragmentation. The unified platform currently connects 71 direct participants, integrating 59 commercial banks, six National Treasuries, and six BEAC National Directorates into a single cohesive financial ecosystem.
Developed in partnership with global financial software provider ProgressSoft, SYSTAC 2 utilizes an Application Service Provider (ASP) model. This delivery method centralizes system upgrades and regional security monitoring while significantly reducing the hardware and maintenance burdens on individual banks. The upgraded infrastructure features an automated clearing house (ACH) for retail credit transfers, direct debits, and bulk transactions, alongside an electronic cheque-clearing solution and a dedicated regional dispute management system. Crucially, the platform adopts the ISO 20022 messaging standard to harmonize data processes, streamline cross-border transactions, and make the CEMAC corridor more attractive to international correspondent banking and fintech investment.
Heightened security and compliance were primary drivers for the upgrade, bringing robust new protocols to bolster anti-money laundering (AML) efforts and combat the financing of terrorism (CFT). While the initial transition presented minor operational perturbations affecting specific processing times, BEAC swiftly implemented measures to guarantee service continuity. The successful deployment of SYSTAC 2 establishes a foundational step in the central bank’s broader modernization strategy, paving the way for the future integration of an interoperable instant payments solution and moving the region away from traditional batch processing toward real-time settlement.
