Bank of Uganda Announces 4-Day Payment System Shutdown for Regional Upgrade

Businesses, government agencies, and individuals across Uganda are preparing for potential payment delays as the Bank of Uganda temporarily halts its core national payment systems for a four-day infrastructure upgrade. According to an official notice, the central bank will suspend both the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and the Automated Clearing House (ACH).

The scheduled outage begins at 5:00 PM on Thursday, November 5, and will continue until 9:00 AM on Monday, November 9. During this period, high-value interbank transfers, direct debits, bulk salary payments, and cheque clearances will be frozen. The central bank explained that the temporary shutdown is a necessary step in a broader regional integration initiative to modernize domestic financial networks.

The upgrade aligns with the East African Community Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan, designed to boost the efficiency, resilience, and interoperability of Uganda’s financial infrastructure. The RTGS system serves as the core backbone for time-critical, high-value financial operations, processing trillions of shillings monthly. Similarly, the ACH handles vital retail credit transfers and cheque clearances.

Economic analysts and industry observers have cautioned that the four-day freeze could create localized liquidity bottlenecks. Companies depending on interbank Electronic Funds Transfers to settle supplier bills or process Friday payrolls will likely encounter delays, creating a transaction backlog when regular operations resume on Monday morning.

To manage the disruption, the regulator has encouraged the public to plan ahead and consult their commercial banks regarding alternative transaction arrangements. While interbank clearing will pause, internal account transfers, mobile money transactions, ATM withdrawals, and card payments independent of the RTGS clearing house are expected to operate normally.

Read the full story on the Daily Monitor.