Mambo 👋! Africa’s biggest mobile money platform is finally piloting stablecoins in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The story
M-Pesa piloted stablecoin payments with Visa and Onafriq in DRC.
The partnership aims to transform international payments by using stablecoins for faster and lower cost cross border settlements.
Coming at a time when nearly every major African payments company has a stablecoin strategy, this feels bigger than another pilot. It sends a clear message that stablecoins are entering legacy payment platforms at scale, not as standalone products, but as infrastructure.
Deals
FiatSend secured $92K in XLM from Stellar to accelerate stablecoin powered payouts across Africa’s digital economy.
The platform enables businesses and fintechs to scale payouts across Africa, making stablecoin payments seamless in the background. It’s another move that reinforces our thesis: stablecoins will power Africa’s digital economy behind the scenes, without most users ever needing to interact with them directly.
Launches
Nuvion integrated Ripple USD (RLUSD), expanding its global stablecoin payments and blockchain infrastructure.
Nuvion already powers stablecoin payment infrastructure for fintechs such as Flutterwave. Just weeks after Ripple invested in Flutterwave, Nuvion is now integrating Ripple’s stablecoin, further strengthening the ecosystem.
To us, this reinforces another core thesis: native stablecoin companies are unlikely to outcapitalize large traditional fintechs. Their enduring advantage lies in building the underlying technology that powers those fintechs, rather than competing with them directly.
Regulation
Nigeria’s SEC admitted seven fintechs into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP), a sandbox for crypto and digital asset businesses.
Another sign that more African regulators are moving from bans to supervised experimentation, a positive shift for the crypto industry’s long term growth.
South Africa published draft tax guidance explaining how existing tax laws apply to crypto transactions, from trading and staking to using digital assets for payments.
Moves like this help normalize digital assets. Instead of asking whether crypto should exist, regulators are increasingly explaining how it should operate within the existing financial system.
Madini
The Stablecoin Founder Map Doesn't Match the Stablecoin Volume Map.
Most assume the Stablecoin opportunity is centered where the capital is, in New York, San Francisco, and London. The largest stablecoin markets on Earth are in countries where most VCs have never held a meeting.
From inside
African crypto startups are getting into the lending business.
As more financial products are built on digital assets, stablecoins gain another role, not just moving money, but powering everyday financial services.
On the record
Nigeria received $59 billion in cryptocurrency between 2023 and 2024.
“The $59 billion did not come from a handful of early adopters running speculative plays on offshore exchanges. It came from everyday Nigerians using digital assets to solve real financial problems: protecting income from naira devaluation, sending and receiving value across borders without the friction of legacy banking, and accessing financial tools that the formal sector has been slow to provide”
Written from inside Africa with love 🇹🇿💚
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