Payments in Africa shouldn't be this hard
Africa has deeper payment fragmentation than anywhere else on Earth. Every country has different providers, different APIs, different auth flows, different settlement timelines. Every company building in African fintech independently solves the same expensive infrastructure problems.
The vision
Zirzir is an open-source payment infrastructure stack that abstracts away the complexity of African payment gateways. Not just a thin SDK wrapper — a complete operational layer with webhook management, transaction reconciliation, credential isolation, and a real-time dashboard.
The kind of infrastructure that used to take a funded fintech 18 months to build, available to everyone under MIT license.
Our goal is to become the default payment stack for anyone building on the continent. One integration to reach every African payment method — from M-Pesa in Nairobi to Telebirr in Addis Ababa.
Design philosophy
Africa First
USSD flows are first-class citizens, not afterthoughts. Real settlement timelines. Sandbox quirks documented. Built by people who've integrated these gateways.
Open Core, Not Open Bait
The SDK and server are fully MIT-licensed. Cloud is how we fund development. We'll never move features behind a paywall after you depend on them.
One Normalized Interface
A Chapa card payment and a Telebirr USSD push look identical to your code. One Transaction type, one set of statuses, one webhook format.
Self-Hostable by Default
You can run the entire Zirzir stack yourself. Docker, Go binary, or build from source. Your data stays on your servers.
Journey
Zirzir concept born — tired of rebuilding payment infra for every Ethiopian startup
First Telebirr and Chapa integrations, internal server prototype
Open-source launch: SDK (TypeScript, Python), Server, Dashboard
Kenya expansion: M-Pesa and Airtel Money integrations
Zirzir Cloud launch, Nigeria providers, Go SDK
Why "Zirzir"?
ዝርዝር (zirzir) is Amharic for "loose change" or "small coins" — the everyday transactions that power African commerce. From street vendors to ride-hailing apps, these micro-payments are the backbone of the economy. Zirzir makes them flow.
Join the mission
Zirzir is open source. Contribute code, report bugs, write docs, or just star the repo.