South Africa had real-time clearing in 2006. That fact is public. It is also easy to misuse. Live is not the same as used.
I heard it again on Between the Seams with Stitch. PayShap sitting near one transaction per person per month. Pix sitting in the thirties. The gap is not a missing API.
The protocol is the easy part
You can switch money in seconds and still lose to cash. Price that the merchant has to explain. Settlement the shop cannot spend tonight. A code at the till that only one brand can read. Fraud that arrives after the message, not inside it.
A national rail that wants volume has to win those fights on purpose. Incentives for the banks. A price that does not send people back to notes. Consistency across operators. Rules that travel with the payment.
What transfers, and what does not
The mechanism transfers. Cash is the competitor. Certainty is working capital. A live rail can sit unused if the commercial model is wrong.
The institutions do not transfer. UEMOA is not South Africa. We will not copy a foreign switch and call it a product. We will not staff a central-bank programme from a startup office.
What this means for lomi.
We confirm when the rail confirms. We do not operate the national switch. We do not claim a ten-second merchant settlement we do not run.
Our job is the overlay. The page the buyer finishes. The routing. The books that match. The identity the merchant keeps. If a public rail here becomes cheap, certain, and used, we will sit on it. We will not pretend we are it.
Instant is not a go-live. Instant is a commercial model.