Europe and Africa could not look less alike on a payments map. One is a dense network of RTGS platforms, SEPA rails and open‑banking standards; the other is a patchwork of domestic switches, mobile‑money giants and emerging cross‑border corridors. Yet corporate treasurers on both continents now ask the same question:

“If cash can move in seconds, why can’t I see it, segment it and redeploy it just as fast?”

The industry has modernized its delivery rails—SEPA Instant in Europe, PAPSS in Africa—faster than its ledger logic. Funds hit bank accounts immediately, but the systems that classify, reconcile and report those funds still rely on overnight cycles. Virtual Account Management (VAM) closes that gap. By layering flexible sub‑ledgers over a single physical account, it gives banks and their clients the structured, real‑time visibility that instant payments promised but never fully delivered.

This article looks at how the two regions are converging on VAM from opposite directions—and why that convergence is reshaping the competitive landscape of transaction banking.

The Real‑Time Liquidity Gap

Europe is discovering that speed without structure can be chaos. Under the Instant Payments Regulation, euro‑area banks have already had to receive SEPA Instant transfers in ≤ 10 seconds since January 2025; by October every bank must also send them at the same speed and price. Liquidity now hits a corporate’s account out of sequence with its ERP batches, leaving finance teams to reconcile in fragments.

Africa faces almost the mirror image. A regional exporter might collect shillings in Kenya, naira in Nigeria and CFA francs via PAPSS—often through multiple banks because each currency has its own regulatory gatekeeper. Cash is everywhere, but never quite visible enough to hedge or invest in time.

What the two contexts share is a gap between transaction velocity and ledger clarity—and that gap widens every time a new rail or currency comes online.

Why Virtual Accounts Solve the Gap

Virtual accounts serve as an in-house banking system delivered as a bank service. Rather than opening new physical accounts for every customer, project, or subsidiary, corporates can use virtual accounts to create a structured overlay on a single physical account. A physical account remains the legal anchor; above it, software generates as many sub-ledgers as needed, with transactions automatically routed and reconciled into the correct ledger—complete with full audit trails.

For a treasurer, this enables real-time reconciliation, clear internal allocation of funds, and streamlined account number management when responding to acquisitions, regulatory needs, or organizational changes. While virtual accounts provide structured visibility within a single bank, broader cash visibility across multiple banks or jurisdictions requires an additional layer—such as aggregated cash views or cross-bank, cross-country liquidity hierarchies. Banks benefit too. Deposits remain sticky as clients depend on the bank’s ledger logic; cross-sell opportunities grow across FX, working capital, and investment sweeps; and the institution stays central even as new settlement channels emerge.

Lessons the Regions Can Trade

Europe’s modularity beats Africa’s green‑field instinct. European banks have learned to overlay digital services on decades‑old cores through microservice architecture. That discipline is crucial for African banks about to face similar legacy challenges as they scale.

Africa’s fintech partnership model beats Europe’s closed perimeter. African banks routinely embed VAM inside mobile‑money ecosystems, proving that collaboration can expand deposit bases. European banks eyeing embedded‑finance revenue can borrow that playbook as PSD3 opens gates to non‑bank players.

The underlying lesson: VAM is not a regional novelty; it is a universal response to real‑time liquidity demands.

3 Principles of VAM Implementation without Core Turbulence

1. API First Architecture. Deploy VAM as a standalone service that seamlessly integrates with the core via APIs and event streams. All rule changes—such as currency mapping and name match logic—are handled through configuration, ensuring flexibility without modifying code.
2. Pilot for a visible pain. Start with collections by implementing dedicated virtual accounts for one corporate. Once internal teams see the working model, expand to liquidity management, including POBO/COBO/IHB structures and multi-currency setups.
3. Design for multi bank ingestion. If a bank can’t display third party balances, a fintech aggregator will. Make external account feeds a day one requirement to keep treasury share of mind.

 
With that architecture, a bank in either region can launch a minimum viable VAM service in a quarter and iterate.

The Strategic Payoff

Banks that move early get first call on corporate deposits, FX flows and fee‑based services. They also insulate themselves against disintermediation: if a fintech can plug into the bank’s VAM API and issue customer IBANs instantly, there is little reason for it to bypass the bank’s balance sheet.

Corporates benefit by collapsing days of manual treasury work into an automated, real‑time cockpit—crucial when capital markets and supply chains punish slow cash moves.

In a world where rails race ahead of ledgers, Virtual Account Management becomes the connective tissue—linking European speed to African reach and giving treasurers on both continents the clarity they now demand.

Ready to turn fragmented balances into actionable liquidity? Talk to Montran about deploying a modular VAM platform that overlays your existing systems, supports instant payments and cross‑border corridors, and delivers real‑time visibility—from Paris to Lagos and everywhere in between.