In many African markets, stablecoins are gaining traction where traditional cross-border payments remain slow, expensive, or difficult to access. Businesses use them to source dollars, pay suppliers, manage treasury balances, and settle across corridors where correspondent banking can add cost and uncertainty.

The scale is now large enough to show up clearly in regional onchain data. Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in onchain value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52% year-on-year increase that made it the third-fastest-growing digital asset market in the world. Stablecoins account for roughly 43% of the region’s total cryptocurrency transaction volume, while smaller-ticket transfers are more common than elsewhere: more than 8% of crypto transfers in the region were for $10,000 or less, compared with about 6% globally.

Operator data points in the same direction. Yellow Card, a licensed stablecoin infrastructure provider serving more than 30,000 businesses across 20 African countries, reports that 99% of its transactions now involve stablecoins. The leading business use cases are treasury management, supplier payments, and cross-border trade - areas where dollar access, settlement speed, and payment reliability directly affect day-to-day operations.

That operating reality shaped the fourth session of Utila’s Stablecoin Builder Series, which focused on stablecoin use cases across African markets. The conversation looked at where stablecoins are already being used in production, what still limits institutional adoption, and how operators are thinking about liquidity, counterparty risk, regulation, and wallet infrastructure.

That backdrop framed Utila's fourth Stablecoin Builder Series session. Moderated by Lauren Buchholz, who leads fintech growth and partnerships at Utila, the session featured operators working across settlement, liquidity, blockchain infrastructure, banking products, and regulatory coordination:

• ​Ryan Zega, Head of Structured Finance, Aptos Labs

• Jack Chong, Co-founder & CEO of Checker

• ​Mouloukou Sanoh, Co-Founder & CEO of Mansa

• ​Paul Joe, Co-Founder of Daya

• ​Jude Anumudu, Founder of Web3 Global Conference & Ambassador at Stablecoin Standard

Their accounts, drawn from the markets each operates in, point to where stablecoins are solving real problems and where the infrastructure underneath them still has to mature. Here are the major takeaways.

The Payment Problem Starts at the Border

For institutions looking at African stablecoin adoption from the outside, the use case is easy to misread.

The problem is not that every local payment system is broken. Several panelists actually made the opposite point. Kenya’s M-Pesa system supports fast local transfers. Nigeria’s domestic banking rails can move money between accounts quickly. In many markets, the domestic payment experience can be more efficient than systems in North America or Europe.

The problem begins when money has to cross borders.

A Nigerian business paying a supplier in China, a Kenyan company settling with an international vendor, or a fintech serving customers across multiple markets still runs into the same structural constraints: dollar shortages, correspondent banking delays, opaque intermediary chains, high fees, and inconsistent settlement timelines.

Mouloukou Sanoh described sending a payment to Indonesia that disappeared into the correspondent banking chain, with no intermediary able to confirm where the funds sat. Outbound corridors from some markets can carry fees in the high single digits to low double digits, with delays and uncertainty added on top.

Paul Joe made a similar point from the Nigerian market. Domestic bank transfers can be fast. Paying suppliers abroad is different because the business first needs to source dollars. That is the function stablecoins took on early: giving businesses access to dollar-denominated value that can move globally.

For an African business, a dollar-backed stablecoin can serve three practical roles at once. It can support international payments, protect working capital against local currency depreciation, and provide a treasury asset that remains usable across borders.

That makes the stablecoin use case much more specific than “faster payments.” The real demand comes from businesses that need dollar liquidity and settlement reliability in corridors where traditional banking infrastructure still creates friction.

Settlement Is a Liquidity Problem

International payments are often described as a messaging problem, with SWIFT usually being the reference point. But Sanoh argued that settlement is better understood as a balance-sheet problem.

“Payments is a capital game,” he said. If a dollar arrives in one country, a dollar has to be available in the other. Without that liquidity, the payment cannot complete.

That distinction matters. SWIFT can pass messages between banks, but the movement of funds still depends on intermediary banks, pre-funded accounts, and available liquidity across the settlement chain. Each intermediary can add time, cost, and uncertainty.

Mansa’s model addresses the problem at the liquidity layer. The company holds its own balance sheet in USDT and uses that liquidity to settle transactions instantly for payment companies. The licensed payment company handles final collections and payouts, while Mansa supplies the onchain settlement infrastructure and balance-sheet capacity behind the transaction.

By Sanoh’s account, two conditions make this model work: execution speed and sufficient balance sheet depth to absorb local liquidity constraints. Mansa has processed more than $400 million in onchain volume and roughly $200 million in payouts across emerging markets, with particular activity across Africa-China and LATAM-China corridors routed through Hong Kong.

This shows why stablecoins are useful in cross-border payment corridors. They are not only a faster rail. They also give operators a different way to manage liquidity.

For payment companies, the operational challenge then becomes much broader than sending a token from one wallet to another. They need treasury visibility, liquidity controls, reconciliation workflows, counterparty management, and policy-based approvals across multiple markets and chains.

That is where the infrastructure requirement becomes more demanding.

Counterparty Risk Shapes Stablecoin Adoption

When cross-border settlement depends on local liquidity providers, OTC desks, banking partners, and parallel-market counterparties, counterparty risk becomes part of the payment stack.

Jack Chong identified this as one of the largest constraints for stablecoin payments across African corridors. In his view, liquidity depth and banking access matter, but the reliability of counterparties can become the more immediate scaling problem.

FX providers in the region have a history of failing, disappearing, or creating losses for the companies that depend on them. Contract enforcement can also vary significantly by market. For treasury teams, this makes stablecoin custody and control more important.

Holding value in institution-controlled wallets gives a company direct control over its funds instead of relying entirely on an intermediary’s solvency. That does not remove all risk, but it changes the risk model. The business can separate liquidity access from custody, approvals, and treasury controls.

Chong also warned that many treasurers underestimate the operational differences between stablecoin assets. In traditional FX, one dollar is generally treated as equivalent to another dollar. In stablecoin operations, that assumption can break down.

USDT on Aptos, USDT on Tron, and USDC on Ethereum can behave like different operating instruments. They may settle at different speeds, require different wallets, trade at different prices, and introduce different reconciliation requirements. A treasury team that treats them as identical dollar balances can inherit complexity it did not plan for.

For fintechs building cross-border products, Chong outlined several components that need to be in place before stablecoin operations can scale:

• Wallet infrastructure to hold and move funds securely, with permissions, approvals, and reconciliation across chains and counterparties.

• KYT and KYC providers to monitor transactions, verify users, and support regulatory obligations.

• Operational capacity to book transfers, execute trades, manage counterparties, and reconcile ledgers across systems that may still run through WhatsApp, Slack, and OTC workflows.

This is one of the main lessons for institutions entering African corridors. Stablecoins can simplify settlement, but they also shift complexity into operations. Wallets, counterparties, chain selection, compliance checks, and reconciliation become part of the core payment workflow.

Regulation Keeps Scaling Market by Market

The regulatory picture across Africa is improving, but it remains fragmented.

Jude Anumudu pointed to South Africa, Ghana, Mauritius, and Kenya as markets with clearer digital asset regulation. Nigeria, despite its significant stablecoin volume, still has a more unsettled framework.

That fragmentation matters because a company licensed in one market cannot assume the same permission applies elsewhere. A license in Ghana or South Africa does not automatically support operations in Nigeria. Cross-border passporting for stablecoin activity does not yet exist in a region-wide form.

Paul Joe noted that regulatory conditions in Nigeria have improved compared with earlier cycles. The country’s Securities and Exchange Commission has moved toward a licensing framework for digital asset service providers, and operators are engaging more directly with regulators. Kenya and Ghana have also taken steps toward clearer frameworks.

Even with that progress, operators still need to build market by market. Licensing, banking partners, payout providers, compliance requirements, local currency access, and regulator expectations can vary significantly across jurisdictions.

Anumudu pointed to regional harmonization efforts, including the African Continental Free Trade Area, as a potential long-term path toward reducing this fragmentation. For now, stablecoin operators still need local execution strategies in each market where they operate.

This has direct infrastructure implications. Compliance cannot be solved once and reused everywhere. Stablecoin operations across African corridors require configurable policies, local compliance integrations, transaction monitoring, and approval workflows that can adapt to jurisdiction-specific requirements.

For banks and regulated institutions, this is one reason adoption depends on more than demand. The use case may be clear, but the operating model still needs to satisfy local regulators, banking partners, and internal risk teams.

Local Stablecoins Need Interoperability Before They Can Scale

The rise of local-currency stablecoins raises an important question: will dollar-backed stablecoins remain dominant, or will local stablecoins take a larger role in African payment flows?

The panel’s view was nuanced but leaned clearly toward continued dollar dominance in the near term.

Dollar-backed stablecoins remain dominant because they solve the most urgent problem: access to dollar-denominated value. In markets facing currency depreciation or dollar shortages, businesses and consumers often want USDT or USDC because those assets preserve purchasing power and remain liquid across global corridors.

Sanoh argued that if you asked someone in a market such as Venezuela or Zimbabwe is asked what stablecoin they want, they are likely to say USDT. That demand reflects practical economic needs rather than brand preference.

Local stablecoins can still become important, particularly for intra-African trade. A Nigerian business could eventually pay a Ghanaian supplier using a local-currency stablecoin if the required banking, liquidity, and payment infrastructure matures. Anumudu pointed to local stablecoins such as Nigeria’s CNGN and emerging South African initiatives as signs of market development.

But Sanoh explained that local stablecoins need stronger interoperability before they can become widely useful. A Kenyan user, for example, should be able to move from M-Pesa into a shilling stablecoin and then into USDT onchain with minimal friction. Without that connection between local payment rails, banking partners, and dollar liquidity, the local stablecoin adds limited practical value.

Market makers and local on/off-ramp providers such as Honeycoin and Kotani Pay already help move value between fiat and stablecoins in some markets. For local stablecoins to compete or complement those flows, they need to improve the connection between domestic money, onchain liquidity, and cross-border settlement.

The likely path is therefore not a simple shift away from dollar-backed stablecoins. Local stablecoins may develop around domestic payments, local settlement, and intra-African trade, while dollar-backed stablecoins continue to dominate cross-border liquidity and treasury use cases.

Stablecoin Operations Are Becoming Core Financial Infrastructure

The clearest takeaway from the session is that stablecoin adoption across African markets is moving into operational infrastructure.

Early adoption came from the need to access dollars, move funds faster, and avoid the delays of traditional cross-border settlement. As volume grows, the bottlenecks become more operational: liquidity management, counterparty risk, market-by-market compliance, chain selection, treasury visibility, approvals, and reconciliation.

That creates a different set of requirements for fintechs, PSPs, banks, and enterprises.

A team building stablecoin payment flows across African corridors needs more than wallet access. It needs infrastructure that can support secure custody, policy-controlled approvals, multi-chain treasury operations, compliance integrations, and reliable settlement workflows across fragmented markets.

The businesses gaining traction are treating stablecoins as part of their financial operating stack. They need to know where liquidity sits, which counterparties they can trust, which chains and assets they support, how approvals are enforced, how transactions are monitored, and how balances are reconciled across systems.

Utila provides institutional-grade, non-custodial wallet infrastructure, policy controls, compliance integrations, and treasury tooling for companies moving and managing digital assets at scale. For teams operating across African and global payment corridors, the platform supports the controls, visibility, and execution workflows needed to manage stablecoin operations in production.

Stablecoins are already helping African businesses access dollars, pay suppliers, preserve treasury value, and settle across borders. The next phase of adoption will depend on whether institutions can operate those flows with enough control, compliance, and reliability to support real payment volume.

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