New Visa card from CBE and Ethiopian Airlines makes it easy for Ethiopians to pay for things when travelling or doing business overseas.
For decades, making a legitimate international payment from Ethiopia required documentation, bank queues, and frequent rejection. The new prepaid Visa card solves that.
If you are Ethiopian and you have ever tried to make an international payment through the formal banking system, you know the friction. The documentation. The queues. The wait times that outlast the transaction itself. For years, the demand for a simple, reliable way to pay abroad has far outpaced what the system could offer. That gap is now closing. A new prepaid Visa card, issued jointly by the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and Ethiopian Airlines, is designed to do exactly what millions of Ethiopians have been asking for: let them pay for things internationally, simply and formally, while earning ShebaMiles on every purchase.
The timing is not accidental. In July 2024, the National Bank of Ethiopia introduced a market-based exchange rate through Directive FXD/01/2024, replacing the old surrender requirements that had constrained foreign currency access for exporters and consumers alike. Then in February 2026, the NBE deepened the reform further, allowing services-sector exporters to retain 100 percent of their foreign earnings indefinitely. These are structural shifts. For the first time in a generation, Ethiopia’s foreign exchange architecture is oriented toward market access rather than allocation. That regulatory foundation created the conditions. But regulation alone does not solve the problem at the consumer level. Someone still had to build the product.
This is what CBE and Ethiopian Airlines have done. The card connects holders to Visa’s global merchant network. You need accounts with both institutions to get one. But what makes it significant is not the plastic — it is what the card is positioned to replace. Of the estimated $35 billion in annual diaspora remittances to Ethiopia, only about 22 percent currently flows through formal banking channels. The rest moves through informal networks — not because people prefer informality, but because the formal system historically did not offer a product that matched their needs. This card is built to change that equation.
This is part of a broader sequence. In January 2026, CBE launched CBE Connect, described as Ethiopia’s first multicurrency digital wallet, in partnership with fintechs Star Pay Financial Solutions and EagleLion System Technology. Diaspora users can hold foreign currency accounts, convert at market rates, and transfer instantly into Ethiopia. That product handles the inbound flow. The prepaid Visa card handles the outbound. Together, they represent CBE building the infrastructure to serve cross-border money movement in both directions.
Ethiopian Airlines’ role here goes beyond co-branding. The airline carried 22.9 million passengers in the 2023/24 fiscal year, the majority of them on international routes through Addis Ababa Bole. That is a large base of frequent international travellers who already have the demand for a product like this. Ethiopian Airlines brings what CBE cannot provide alone: global brand recognition that Visa and international merchants trust, and a built-in distribution channel of customers who travel regularly. ShebaMiles is the mechanism that ties everyday international spending to the airline’s loyalty programme, giving the card a value proposition that extends well beyond payments.
The macroeconomic context adds another layer of significance. Remittances reached a historic high of over $6 billion in 2023/24, functioning as Ethiopia’s most important and dependable source of foreign exchange. The NBE’s ability to sustain the post-reform exchange rate depends in part on keeping those flows within the formal system. Every transaction that moves through this card rather than an informal channel is a transaction that supports the Birr’s stability. The card is a consumer product and a structural tool at the same time. Analysts project the Birr to stabilise at 160 to 165 to the dollar by June 2026. A functioning formal payment infrastructure is one of the conditions that makes that stabilisation hold.
The architecture is coming together. CBE Connect for diaspora inflows. The prepaid Visa for outbound spending. EthSwitch for domestic interoperability. The NBE’s FX directives providing the regulatory layer underneath. Piece by piece, Ethiopia is assembling a cross-border payment infrastructure that simply did not exist two years ago.