Mambo 👋!
We’re bringing Tanzania’s fintech ecosystem together again for Mambo Stable #02 on 26 November in Dar es Salaam, this time to explore how Tanzania could use stablecoins. Proud to have GCA Pay, Senjaro, Selcom, Sorted Wallet, NEDA Pay, Tembo and Ennovate Ventures supporting this edition.
Meanwhile, Grey gets the green light in Nigeria, Circle backs another African stablecoin company, and Kenya sets a high price for crypto licences.
Let’s get inside!
The story
Grey secured an International Money Transfer Operator (IMTO) licence from Nigeria’s central bank, adding to its existing MSB licence in Canada.
In October, Grey crossed $300 million in virtual account volume, powered by Bridge’s stablecoin infrastructure.
There’s a pattern here: As stablecoin payment volumes grow, companies are investing more in licences and compliance. Technology moves the money, but licences determine where you can operate.
Deals
Circle Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in African stablecoin platform CrissCross through its parent company, Stitch Group.
Circle Ventures is also an investor in Flutterwave. It is becoming clearer: Stablecoin issuers aren’t just building the technology. They’re also investing in companies that can get stablecoins into the hands of more customers and businesses.
Launches
Busha, an SEC licensed Nigerian crypto exchange, unveiled its own naira stablecoin, NGNb. The stablecoin is set to launch on Solana and Base, backed 1:1 by reserves held in Nigerian naira
Regulation
Kenya’s crypto companies have until 4 November to comply with the new Virtual Asset Service Providers Act.
Under the new rules, crypto exchanges need at least $775,000 in capital, stablecoin issuers $2.3 million, and operating without a licence could attract fines of up to $194,000.
Madini
South Africa is the region's largest crypto economy.
From inside
“We've seen a lot of African cross border payments companies come and go (fiat & stables flows).
One of the hardest signals to judge is early transaction volume. This is for several reasons:
1. Early transaction volume is usually the shortest GTM path: existing relationships and one-off deals.
2. Early teams off of an initial raise will also undercut the spread (even if loss-making) with the mindset that they just need to get customers through the door.
3. For the quality customers that have genuinely repeatable demand, early teams mistake their role as a redundant provider vs. as that of the core provider.
So in the worst cases, you have teams showcasing demand that is unscalable, unprofitable, and non-critical.
We've seen instances of startups crossing $1bn+ TPV with these brittle foundations.
But you can't fault founders for leaning into what works when you're starting out. In fact, it's one of the only things you should be doing.
It's often that the 'good' and 'bad' teams look the same when they start.
I do think it's an investor/advisor's job to help team stay guarded about these false signals and build towards resilient volumes.
My guess is that the graveyard of xborder payments in our ecosystem will not fail because they couldn't show big volumes, but because they couldn't build towards resilient volumes” - Stephen Deng, Co-founder at DFS LAB which has invested in stablecoin fintechs like Nala, Stablesea and Checker.
On the record
Naira stablecoins processed $64.92 million in the last 30 days, compared to $5.5 million for South African rand stablecoin.
Written from inside Africa with love 🇹🇿💚
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