How AI Money — Africa FX is built

Ni Biashara Shelves sells two different FX numbers. They are not interchangeable, and neither one is a rate we observed at a central-bank window.

Official reference rate

Official reference rate via Frankfurter (frankfurter.dev). Frankfurter blends reference rates published by multiple central banks. This number is that blend, not a single central-bank fixing and not an ECB rate unless a provider row says so.

Source: Frankfurter (frankfurter.dev). The response field as_of is the date Frankfurter published for that quote. fetched_at is when this Worker read it. providers lists the publisher rows Frankfurter returned, with a name where we know the code (CBK, CBN, CBG, SARB, ECB). A provider row is an input to the blend. It is not the rate field.

Pairs: USD-KES, USD-NGN, USD-GHS, USD-TZS, USD-UGX, USD-ZAR, USD-EGP, USD-RWF.

Shelf price: $0.01 for one pair, $0.02 for all eight. The legacy routes /api/fx/:pair and /api/fx charge those same amounts.

Street (parallel) rate

The street rate is the median VWAP of Bybit's public USDT/fiat P2P order book, walked for $1,000 across at least 3 advertisers on each side, then divided by a USDT/USD spot basis (Coinbase, otherwise Kraken, otherwise assumed 1). OKX's book is fetched and archived and does not set the published rate. This is not a central-bank rate, not a bureau de change quote, and not a rate board such as abokiFX.

Source name on the response: Bybit P2P. Venue: https://www.bybit.com/en/p2p. The official number sitting next to it is the Frankfurter blend above (official_source).

Pairs: USD-NGN, USD-GHS only. KES: no material parallel market; the shilling floats and the official rate is the market rate EGP: the pound was unified in 2024; the residual premium is below the P2P rail's own cost UGX: no material parallel market; official rate is the market rate TZS: no material parallel market; official rate is the market rate ZAR: no exchange controls of this kind; any premium observed is P2P rail cost, not a street rate RWF: no material parallel market; official rate is the market rate

Shelf price: $0.05 on GET /shelf/fx-parallel. The older route GET /api/parallel/:pair still charges $0.01, because that is the amount its 402 has been charging. Same data, two routes, two prices — each page states the route.

History shelves replay our own hourly archive of that Bybit-derived quote. captured_at is when the book was read. A missed hour is missing; we do not fill it in.

What a free preview is

/fx/sample returns a real Frankfurter quote for the official shelves. Street-rate, history and daily-brief previews are marked illustrative: true and are not today's book. Paying the shelf is how you get the live street number.