It considers the continent to be the fastest-growing artificial intelligence (AI) audience in the world and its most underserved.
According to the firm, Africa is setting the pace in AI, with Kenya ranking first globally in ChatGPT usage, with 42.1 percent of internet users engaging with the tool monthly, ahead of the United Arab Emirates and more than double the United States.
Nigeria’s developer community has surpassed 1.1 million on GitHub, growing 28 percent year on year, with Kenya adding another 393 000 developers at 33 percent growth.
OpenAI reports that ChatGPT adoption in emerging markets is growing at more than four times the rate of adoption in the wealthiest countries.
Premium AI tiers, namely ChatGPT Plus and Pro, Claude, Midjourney, and the OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, are billed in US dollars through payment systems that routinely reject African cards.
In Nigeria, banks re-enabled international payments on naira cards only in mid-2025, with spending limits varying from $500 to $20 000 per quarter depending on the bank.
In Kenya, M-Pesa is not accepted by most AI platforms, and users report that even virtual cards from local mobile-money services are declined at AI checkouts.
In Ethiopia, the gap is widest.
PayPal does not offer full services, foreign currency access is tightly rationed, and the country’s first virtual Visa card supports incoming remittances only.
Guides on how to pay for ChatGPT Plus in Nigeria have become an online content genre of their own, while searches on how to pay for ChatGPT in Ethiopia return almost nothing. Ethiopians can use ChatGPT.
They largely cannot pay to upgrade it.
“AI usage across the world is growing no matter where users are, right up until the payment screen. We are fixing the supply side: a working card that any AI platforms accept,” LinkPay stated in its study.
LinkPay is a virtual card platform for teams and individuals who need instant international payment cards without banking overhead.
It reports processing up to 1 million transactions per month for a community of more than 100 000 users, with services available in over 170 countries and territories.
