Mambo 👋! After investing in African fintechs like LemFi and Sote, Tether now wants in with regulated finance. This week, it signed an MoU with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to explore tokenized securities and USDT settlement. More on that below.
Also, a small change at Stablekoin: starting this week, our Thursday editions will live as articles on X, where we’ll go deeper into the stories and signals shaping stablecoins across Africa. Follow us there so you don’t miss them.
Our Monday posts continue here as usual.
The story
Tether signed a MoU with Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Tether and the Nairobi Securities Exchange will explore using Hadron to issue and trade tokenized securities, while also assessing whether USDT could be used as a settlement layer for exchange transactions.
Stablecoin issuers are moving closer to regulated financial markets. Beyond backing licensed fintechs, they’re increasingly partnering directly with established institutions to bring stablecoin and tokenization infrastructure into traditional finance.
Deals
No startup deals this week, so we are looking at Kulipa, which is winding down just four months after announcing a $6.2 Million raise.
The crypto card startup, which reportedly issued 120,000 cards for 20 clients and partnered with Flutterwave, is said to be winding down over solvency issues. Card volume peaked at $9 Million in January before falling to $1.8 Million in July, following issuer and regulatory troubles.
Another reminder that what kills other fintechs can kill stablecoin startups too: partner dependency, regulation, cash flow, and execution.
Launches
Nigerian crypto exchange Quidax expanded its B2B stablecoin business to 21 corridors.
Crypto exchanges are expanding beyond trading and speculation. Increasingly, they’re positioning themselves as payment infrastructure providers, using stablecoins to power cross border settlements, treasury, and business payments.
Onafriq, which operates across 43 African markets, partnered with Privy to integrate stablecoin payment infrastructure into its network.
A complement to our thesis that stablecoins in Africa are increasingly being integrated into platforms people already use, rather than requiring users to adopt entirely new stablecoin products.
Regulation
Nigeria started taxing crypto transactions.
Nigeria’s Revenue Service has introduced a 1.5% stamp duty on fiat to crypto and crypto to fiat transactions. Licensed exchanges and other Virtual Asset Service Providers will deduct the tax from the digital assets before they’re credited to users’ wallets.
Nigeria is no longer just regulating crypto. It is now building a tax framework around it.
Madini
Kenya’s new crypto rules could force exchanges to delist foreign stablecoins.
Under Kenya’s new VASP regulations, licensed exchanges can only list stablecoins approved by the Central Bank of Kenya and issued by licensed issuers. That could put widely used foreign stablecoins like USDT, USDC and USDm behind a new regulatory gate unless their issuers secure approval.
For CBK, this creates a way to control access to offshore stablecoins without having to regulate their foreign issuers directly.
From inside
Luno cut 20% of its global workforce as retail crypto trading slows.
Only about 5% of Luno’s workforce across Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda was affected. CEO James Lanigan blamed weaker retail trading, changing market conditions, and increased investment in automation.
Crypto’s center of gravity is shifting beyond trading. While retail exchange activity slows, payments, stablecoin settlement, and other real world use cases are gaining traction, particularly across Africa.
On the record
Travel Fintech stablecoin startup Turnstary processed $60 Million in the first six months of 2026.
Written from inside Africa with love 🇹🇿💚
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