Question

Read the passage below carefully and answer the question that follows:

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the rapid expansion of mobile financial services has drastically increased financial inclusion for previously unbanked rural populations. However, the fragmented nature of proprietary payment platforms long restricted users to transaction networks within a single service provider, limiting cross-border trade and regional economic integration. To address this bottleneck, several national central banks have recently mandated cross-network interoperability, forcing telecommunication firms and digital banks to integrate their payment switches onto unified national gateways. While critics initially feared that forced interoperability would erode the profit margins of dominant telecommunication operators, initial empirical data indicates that overall transaction volume has surged exponentially, offsetting lower per-transaction fees. For instance, in Ghana, where interoperability was enforced in 2018, small-scale cross-border merchants experienced a thirty percent reduction in remittance transfer delays within the first year alone. Furthermore, tech start-ups in Lagos and Nairobi are now leveraging these unified switches to build secondary financial products, such as micro-crop insurance and automated inventory credit. Ultimately, mandatory payment interoperability serves as the vital structural catalyst for transforming fragmented digital wallets into an integrated, resilient regional digital economy.

Which of the following statements best captures the essential central argument of the passage while discarding secondary illustrations and supporting details?