United Bank for Africa has been named the winner of the African category at the 2026 Banker Technology Awards, recognised for its use of artificial intelligence to drive cross-border banking across more than 20 African markets. The award arrived in the same week as the relaunch of UBA's RedApp mobile banking platform following a comprehensive upgrade, making this one of the more active weeks in the bank's recent digital history.

What Won UBA the Award

The Banker, which received close to 200 submissions across 17 regional and product categories this year, highlighted UBA's integration of Leo, its AI-powered chatbot, with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System. The combination allows customers to send funds across borders in local currencies through a conversational interface, removing the friction that has historically made cross-border transfers in Africa slow, expensive, and dependent on traditional banking channels.

UBA's Executive Director Designate for Digital Banking, Emmanuel Lamptey, who received the award on behalf of the bank, framed the achievement in terms that go beyond a single product. "Africa's financial future will not be built on branches or borders. It will be built on intelligence, interoperability, and trust at scale," he said. On the Leo integration specifically, Lamptey said the investment was a direct response to the cost and friction that has long defined cross-border payments on the continent.



The RedApp Relaunch

Alongside the award, UBA has relaunched its RedApp mobile banking platform with a comprehensive upgrade designed to deliver a faster and more intuitive digital banking experience across its markets. The upgraded app is available now on the Google Play Store for Android and the Apple App Store for iPhone at on.ubagroup.com/redapp.

UBA Group Head of Brand, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Alero Ladipo, described the relaunch as a new chapter in how the bank serves customers digitally. "The new RedApp is faster, cleaner, and built around how our customers actually live and bank," she said.

Why This Matters

UBA operates in 20 African countries, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and the UAE, serving over 45 million customers. An AI-powered chatbot that enables cross-border payments in local currencies at that scale is not a small product experiment. It is infrastructure, and the Banker Technology Award is an external validation that the market recognises it as such.