Awash Bank and Mastercard launch five-card portfolio as foreign exchange reforms reshape payments

#EBR_News Oct 9, 2026

Awash Bank, Ethiopia’s largest private lender, has launched a five-card payment portfolio with Mastercard, aimed at customers ranging from high-net-worth individuals to ordinary account holders and corporate clients. The cards were unveiled on Thursday at a ceremony at Elilly International Hotel in Addis Ababa.

The bank said the launch follows the National Bank of Ethiopia’s (NBE) revised foreign exchange directive, which encourages banks to issue international cards with recognised global card networks.

The portfolio includes the Awash World Elite Debit Card, the Platinum Prepaid Card, the Gold Prepaid Card, a corporate prepaid card and the Awash Plus domestic contactless debit card. A prepaid virtual card for online and remote payments is also part of the range, according to the joint press release.

Awash Bank CEO Tsehay Shiferaw said in her speech that the World Elite card links to a customer’s foreign currency account and does not require travel documents. It also carries travel insurance, airport queue-skipping at selected destinations and lounge access.

The CEO added that the Gold card can be issued on the strength of a customer’s relationship with the bank, even without a foreign currency account.

Shehryar Ali, Mastercard’s senior vice president and country manager for East Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands, said the World Elite card offers free access to about 1,300 airport lounges and 600 golf courses worldwide. “There is no card that enables you to do that in Ethiopia,” Ali told the audience.

He also said four of the five cards were firsts for the Ethiopian market, Tsehay described the corporate card as new to the Ethiopian market, saying it lets companies manage foreign expenses such as travel, accommodation and online payments from within the country.

The launch builds on a three-year partnership in which Awash Bank has issued international prepaid cards. Tsehay said these have served more than 20,000 customers. In the last budget year alone, he said, the bank authorized over $60 million through the cards, of which more than $55 million in transactions were completed.

He said the figures earned the bank recognition from Mastercard, and that demand from its customer base made a wider range of cards necessary.

The scale of Awash Bank’s network explains the ambition. The CEO said the bank has more than 17 million customers, over 1,010 branches, 10 digital branches, more than 1,200 ATMs, over 3,200 point-of-sale terminals and over 20,000 agents.

He added that more than 4 million customers use its payment cards and more than 5 million use its Awash Birr Pro mobile app. The press release, which cites a figure of more than 16 million customers, said the bank’s digital platforms processed more than 1 trillion birr in transactions over a period of a few months.

Both executives pointed to tokenization, which replaces card details with secure digital tokens so that phones, rings or other devices can be used to pay. Tsehay said the Awash Plus card is ready for tokenization, while Ali said the technology could turn everyday items into payment tools.

The press release said Premier Switch Solutions, the bank’s card processing partner, is handling processing and technology implementation. In the release, Ali said the partnership would widen digital payment choice and build trust in Ethiopia’s payments ecosystem.