Stablecoins have become one of the most discussed financial technologies on the continent recently, and for good reason. Their utility drives their growth in Africa; they already account for 43% of the continent’s crypto transaction volume and are increasing foreign remittance volumes in countries like Nigeria, where they facilitated $22 billion within a year.

Although scepticism remains among African observers, corporations, and governments regarding the viability of stablecoins, considerable evidence suggests that they can open up the continent to international businesses and enhance intra-African trade, which still stands at a modest 14.9%.

The utility of stablecoins as an access mechanism and technology offers a compelling opportunity for the continent that cannot be ignored. While in other parts of the world, crypto and stablecoins are nice-to-haves, in Africa, they solve real problems for individuals and businesses whose demand will only increase in the coming years.

African consumers want access

Stablecoins, digital currencies collateralised by fiat like the dollar or euro, are popular in Africa due to accessibility challenges. For instance, converting foreign currencies to Naira might necessitate visiting several banks. Businesses contend with extensive paperwork for cross-currency and cross-border transactions, enduring lengthy queues in banking halls over multiple days for limited and slow transactions.

According to the $1 trillion payment giant, Stripe, since January 2025, stablecoin transaction volume on Stripe has grown steadily at 30% month-over-month, close to the 38% that Stripe-wide transactions achieved throughout 2024. From its vantage point, this indicates that customers without access to traditional banking or who pay with methods unsupported by international retailers are eager to use stablecoins. This description fits people in developing nations, including Africa, who cannot receive money via PayPal or risk having their WorldRemit accounts suddenly deleted when sending money home.

On the continent, these challenges are exacerbated by local currency restrictions such as caps on foreign currency transaction limits, suspension of local debit cards for international transactions, and even the arrest of parallel market traders. In contrast, stablecoins offer a compelling alternative, providing 24/7, low-cost, and instant transfers, proving to be a viable option even amidst the growing presence of remittance fintechs in Africa. Using stablecoins for $200 remittances from Sub-Saharan Africa cuts costs by roughly 60% compared to traditional fiat methods.

A solution to Africa’s currency problem 

A mixture of this shortage and the rapid depreciation of local currencies across Africa has significantly increased consumer and business appetite for foreign-denominated savings. For instance, Nigeria’s naira has lost approximately 80% of its value against the dollar since 2020. Chainalysis reported a rise in stablecoin volume in countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia as their currencies depreciated.

Following the Nigerian government’s 2023 devaluation of the naira, many Nigerian startups earning in naira after raising capital in U.S. dollars faced financial strain. It’s no wonder that many African businesses are adopting stablecoins for treasury management. Yellow Card, Africa’s most funded crypto exchange, saw its annual transaction volume from businesses using its platform for cross-border payments and treasury management more than double from $1.3 billion in 2023 to $3 billion in 2024.

Africa’s currency landscape is also highly fragmented. With 42 different currencies and 861 intra-African payment corridors, a lack of seamless interoperability forces a reliance on scarce foreign currencies. For example, a Ghanaian merchant sending money to an Ivorian supplier typically sees funds converted from Cedis to dollars, then to CFA franc. This process, involving multiple exchange rate fees and inefficiencies, costs multinational corporations $5 billion annually.

Due to this, cross-border solution startups are experiencing significant growth in payment transaction volumes. For instance, Conduit, a payment gateway serving import-export businesses in Africa and Latin America, doubled its annualised payment transaction volume (PTV) from $5 billion to $10 billion. The stealth remittance product Juicyway has processed a total payment volume of $1.3 billion. 

Similarly, a newly designed intra-Africa payment platform developed by PAPSS and supported by the African Union—featuring 15 African central banks and 12 payment switches on its network—will enable real-time cross-border settlements across Africa using local currency stablecoins. It is expected to integrate cNGN, a live stablecoin pegged to the Nigerian Naira, and eventually support other African currencies or central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

For Africa’s 400 million young people, stablecoins, by enabling global payouts, offer an opportunity to tap into the global economy. Zach Abraham, CEO of Bridge (a stablecoins company acquired by Stripe), observed, “Almost all of our product market fit is outside the US,” highlighting that some of the most compelling use cases his company observes involve global payouts, treasury management, and global card products.

While some critics warn of over-dependence on the dollar, dollar-pegged stablecoins can serve as a crucial starting point to harmonising trade on the continent. They can help African countries connect their small businesses with others across the continent, paving the way for eventual replacement with local currency stablecoins or CBDCs.

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Sultan Quadri currently serves as senior content strategist at TechPR Africa, a leading comms company. He has six years of experience reporting on technology’s impact in sub-Saharan Africa for TechCabal, Al Jazeera, Semafor, Rest of the World, Quartz Africa, and Deutsche Welle, with a strong focus on emerging technologies.

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Every day in Nigeria, over 33 million instant transfers race across our banking rails—from buying fuel and airtime to paying rent. Whether it’s a corporate exec in Victoria Island or an okada rider in Kano, the money moves. But not the context.

Each transaction tells a story: your rent pattern, salary cycle, and debt reliability. But that story is locked in silos. Banks hold it. Wallets replicate it. Fintechs rebuild it from scratch. None of it flows freely until now.

The Central Bank of Nigeria’s Open Banking framework introduces a radical idea: your financial data belongs to you. And if you permit it, any licensed provider should be able to use that data to serve you better.

Everyone wins when financial data is no longer siloed

The biggest winners are the people who’ve had the least control until now: everyday customers. They’re no longer stuck with one provider holding their financial history. They can move freely, compare services, and choose what works best.

This shift also opens the door for builders. Many who spent years working around data restrictions can now plug into verified, standardised APIs. Less time spent reverse-engineering statements. More time solving real problems.

Banks stand to gain too, if they act fast. The ones that adapt can move beyond traditional products and become platforms. By exposing APIs, they stay relevant even outside their apps.

At a broader level, the economy wins. Done right, Open Banking doesn’t just modernise the system; it makes it more inclusive, resilient, and responsive.

From hacky, siloed workarounds to real scalable solutions

Guess what happens when financial data moves safely, with customer permission. That data powers better products, faster decisions, and broader access. These are some examples:

1. Credit that actually works

Lending in Nigeria is mostly guesswork. That leads to high interest rates, collateral demands, and even public shaming when things go wrong.

With open banking, a small business owner can grant access to a year’s worth of bank transactions. A lender reviews verified income data, decides in minutes, and sets up repayment via direct debit. No land documents. No guarantors. No friction.

This is how we make credit cheaper and smarter.

2. A national fraud radar

Every fintech in Nigeria has war stories. Fraudsters exploit weak points, spread funds through mule accounts, and disappear. The damage is local, and the pattern is the same everywhere.

Open banking makes it possible to share live fraud signals. If a bad actor gets flagged at one provider, others can detect and block them in real-time. Shared infrastructure, device hashes, IP patterns, account links, etc., make fraud detection collaborative.

Each fintech player stops playing defense alone.

3. Direct debits that travel with you

Cards are great until they aren’t. Direct debit mandates don’t follow you when you switch banks or change devices. That’s why recurring billing with a bank is clunky and adoption is low.

With open banking, you set up a reusable direct debit mandate tied to your identity. One dashboard shows every recurring instruction from Netflix to PHCN bills. You can cap, pause, or revoke them anytime.

Need more control? Enable two-factor approval. Spot a suspicious charge? You can block it before it hits.

Getting regulation right is key 

Compared to other countries, Nigeria is off to a solid start. The UK’s rollout faced governance issues and weak enforcement. Some banks dragged their feet, and adoption slowed because customers didn’t see enough value or protection.

In Brazil, security concerns and uneven API quality made early adoption tricky. Many people still don’t know how Open Finance works or why they should care.

Nigeria now has a chance to avoid those mistakes. Its rules, laid out in Section 11, outline how consent, security, and reliability should work in every real-world API call, are clear. Its structure is strong. But the real test is in how well providers follow through—and how quickly regulators respond when they don’t.

The real risk: We waste the opportunity

Open banking gives us a rare chance to redesign Nigeria’s financial rails with trust and interoperability at the core. But the system is only as strong as what we build on top of it.  We’ve seen what can go wrong. The eNaira launched with big goals but didn’t take off, partly because people didn’t understand its value.

If APIs are unreliable, if customers don’t understand what they’re consenting to, or if data hoarding continues under new labels, this momentum will stall.

But if we build carefully and fast, we can enable a generation of financial products that are smarter, safer, and truly inclusive.

The APIs are coming. The opportunity is open. The next move is ours.

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Lukman Bello is a payments infrastructure expert and Technical Solutions Lead at Paystack, where he has spent more than six years guiding businesses through the intricate world of African fintech. He has overseen integrations for hundreds of notable local and global brands, turning regulatory complexity into clear product strategies and robust code.

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Startups fail for different reasons, some within the founders’ control, and some out of their control. When startups fail, the world points fingers at the founders and asks various questions about marketing, product, and compliance. Guess what?  People barely probe into the people and HR processes, at least not as frequently as other functions. Quite paradoxical because people drive processes and keep businesses running, right?

According to StartupGraveyard, 12 startups shut down in Africa in 2024, and about 25% of these shutdowns were due to people and operations-related challenges. 

The previous year, 18 startups met their demise due to the absence of operational licences from relevant authorities, harsh macro-economic processes, and, of course, scandalous actions by founders due to the absence of  HR processes. This data reinforces how pivotal HR processes are to the sustainability of startups, guess what? It is one of the most overlooked roles, or have you not heard founders say, “Is it not just HR?”

As an observer in the tech ecosystem, I have seen different founders make foundational errors when it comes to people processes, and this has gone on to affect how they operate, how well they operate, and the life span of their operations.

The first and most repeated mistake I have seen founders make is hiring shiny talents in the infancy stages. It is one thing to make a senior hire; it is another decision entirely to hire from a big-tech simply for the name, the profile, or the image. Not only does the hire not have the local context, but it also eats deep into the almost meagre funds that affect the business’s runway.

For instance, when the Coinbase-backed crypto startup Mara went bankrupt in 2024, one of the problems the CEO highlighted was that they “paid high salaries to attract talent from well-paying companies like Apple, but they didn’t always deliver.”

An adjacent scenario is when these talents are hired but are stifled from expressing their expertise, where founders rarely allow talents to implement ideas and are turned into “yes-men.” 

This is a misuse of scarce resources (and investors’ funds) as the cost of hiring shiny talents will get you two or three excellent local talents who will add more impact. 

Another major problem is the absence of a transparent remuneration structure that is scalable and defendable. From Mara to 54gene  to Payday, the paucity of a salary structure—with the founders being overpaid and staff earning peanuts—has led to the demise of several startups.

There are a hundred more people operations mistakes Nigerian and African founders make, like scaling the workforce size without proper planning, attributing personal expenses as business costs, and lots more.

The disheartening tale is that these gaffes do not just lead to the end of a promising enterprise; the catastrophe spills over to the members of staff; they leave real people stranded, employees who tied their hopes and finances to a promising vision, only to be betrayed by the spontaneous decisions made by startup founders.

What do we do to reduce the rate at which founders make these people-centric blunders?

Proper workforce planning and strategy: Planning your workforce is important, as building your MVP. You do not have to increase your staff from 20 to 60 in three months just because you raised $3 million pre-seed, nor do you have to hire from Google or Meta if you don’t have the tools and systems required for them to succeed.

Have a transparent total rewards structure: Having built the compensation and benefits structure of at least six startups in the last five years, one of the strong foundations you can lay for your startup is a defined salary structure alongside other benefits. When people know their level, the pay they are on, and what they need to do to get to the next pay band, they are motivated to do good work, and this ultimately adds value to your organisation. Spelling out other benefits like performance bonus, annual bonus, Short-Term Incentive Plan (STIP), and other kinds of rewards also helps steer the psychology of the workforce in the right direction.

Monitor people metrics: Founders are often obsessed with product and growth metrics, and while this is great, it is also paramount that they monitor people metrics. They should ask questions around the cost of human capital, attrition rate, retention rate, engagement rate, and other related metrics that measure people’s contribution to the business.

Be accountable: From using company’s funds to meet personal needs in the name of making the company a better organisation, to declining when members of staff ask questions, having due process for documentation and reporting is crucial to the longevity of startups, and if you are a founder building for the people, then you should listen to people building with you.

A great startup isn’t just about the product; it’s about the people building the product and having the right processes to ensure that people are continuously empowered to do great work in a psychologically safe environment. 

Emmanuel Faith is a globally certified, award-winning Human Resource Manager with almost a decade of cross-functional experience across diverse industries.  He has spent the last six years in Lead HR roles, building sustainable people processes that help tech companies thrive. He is the founder of HR Clinic, a speed-consulting platform, providing scalable people-centric solutions for Founders who are looking to build the best place to work. 

In a small shop tucked away in Onitsha’s bustling market district, a trader unlocks her smartphone, checks the day’s crypto rates, and sends USDT to her supplier in Guangzhou, China – no delays, no middlemen, and near-instant delivery. It’s a transaction that once took three days or more with hefty foreign exchange fees. Now, it takes less than three minutes. This is the quiet revolution cryptocurrency is powering across Nigeria.

Between July 2023 and June 2024, Nigerians traded over $59 billion in crypto, making the country the second-largest market in the world. And while there’s still some speculative activity, more people are turning to crypto as a functional tool, one that solves real problems in everyday life. It’s meeting financial needs that the traditional system can’t always reach, or can’t reach fast enough. It’s not replacing banks, but it is expanding what’s possible.

With a smartphone, individuals, including the financially excluded, can access digital wallets, save in stablecoins, send money across borders, and get paid in real time. In a country where financial needs are shifting rapidly, crypto is giving people accelerated options, and that flexibility matters. Similar to how many SMEs now rely on USDT to pay overseas suppliers, high-net-worth individuals are also using USD equivalents to preserve value in an inflationary economy, access liquidity, and keep their businesses running smoothly. 

Beyond individual convenience, the functional utility of crypto extends to businesses, creating significant ripple effects across key sectors. In fintech, for instance, it’s powering the growth of decentralised finance (DeFi), offering instant remittance options and novel investment tools. Similarly, e-commerce and retail are gaining efficiency through borderless payments and reduced fees. In the creative economy, freelancers are bypassing payment delays and gatekeepers. Perhaps most significantly, in cross-border trade, stablecoins are providing a vital lifeline for Nigerian businesses grappling with dollar scarcity and currency volatility, simplifying international sourcing and settlements within Africa and beyond. 

From our vantage point at Luno, we’ve seen users increasingly turn to stablecoins like USDT to address these pain points: facilitating swift payments to global partners, securing stable dollar access, and shielding capital from inflation. The popularity of stablecoins among SMEs and high-volume traders points to their reliability in cross-border dealings, while freelancers and importers depend on their speed and stability to participate in the global economy.

Despite this growth, the conversation around cryptocurrency regulation in Nigeria remains complex. Yet from our experience, working closely with regulators can be a win-win for users, government, and industry players alike. Nigerians are already active crypto participants, and ensuring their security is paramount. While many platforms maintain high security standards, regulatory oversight provides an added layer of protection. It can help users access crypto safely while reducing exposure to scams and Ponzi schemes.

Beyond safeguarding users, regulation presents tangible benefits for the government. With an estimated 80% of crypto transactions occurring informally, often peer-to-peer, much of the activity remains outside the tax and legal framework, leaving considerable revenue untapped. This is especially relevant as the market is projected to reach $1.6 billion in revenue by 2025.

Clear, forward-looking regulation could also help stem the outflow of Nigerian talent. Many developers, fintech founders, and startups are incorporating in jurisdictions like the UAE and the UK, where crypto policies are more clearly defined. Regulatory clarity at home could keep this innovation local, strengthening Nigeria’s ecosystem rather than dispersing it.

Moreover, regulation can help build trust and confidence in the crypto space. South Africa offers a compelling example: its introduction of a crypto licensing regime in 2023 coincided with a marked decline in scam-related complaints, demonstrating that smart regulation can create a safer and more resilient sector. Nigeria can follow suit, protecting users while fostering responsible innovation.

Globally, countries like Singapore, the UAE, and South Africa are moving decisively on crypto regulation, attracting investment and innovation in the process. Nigeria, with one of the most engaged crypto user bases in the world, has every reason to lead. We have a chance not only to regulate, but to enable.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP) is a promising first step toward building a more structured, secure, and innovation-friendly digital finance ecosystem. By offering startups regulatory clarity and a path to compliance, ARIP is laying the groundwork for a stronger, safer crypto sector. With two local exchanges already accepted into the sandbox, expanding the program to include more players could create a richer, more competitive ecosystem and unlock the full potential of crypto as a growth driver for Nigeria.

Nigeria has the talent, the tech-savvy population, and the appetite for innovation. With the right regulatory support, we can harness crypto not just as a financial tool but as a catalyst for broader economic transformation. It’s not about choosing between innovation and oversight; it’s about designing a framework that allows both to thrive. If we get it right, crypto can be more than a workaround. It can be a cornerstone of Nigeria’s digital future.

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Ayotunde Alabi is the CEO of Luno Nigeria with over a decade of experience in finance and technology. He has previously held leadership positions at Spektra, ARM HoldCo, FBNQuest, and Heritage Bank Limited. He is a SEC-sponsored professional with certifications from Nigeria’s Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers and the UK’s Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.

Mark your calendars!  Moonshot by TechCabal is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Join Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Early bird tickets now 20% off—don’t snooze! moonshot.techcabal.com