Cleva, a Nigerian fintech startup, successfully secured $1.5 million in pre-seed funding in early 2024 to enhance international payments infrastructure across Africa.
As reported by BitKE back then, the startup had facilitated payments exceeding $1 million monthly for thousands of users within the first four months of its introduction in Nigeria.
FUNDING | Nigerian Fintech, Cleva, Raises $1.5 Million After Facilitating Over $1 Million in 4 Months for Freelancers
According to #Cleva, it has facilitated payments exceeding $1 million monthly for thousands of users within the first four months of its introduction in… pic.twitter.com/mDjEDJbqxX
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) January 9, 2024
What is probably not known is the fact that Cleva leverages stablecoins to achieve this feat and continue to expand its service offerings.
However, Cleva’s clever use of stablecoins is not unique.
All over the continent, tens of fintechs are now leveraging stablecoins to offer their services. A lot of these fintechs have obfuscated their stablecoin offerings making it quite difficult to know if they’re leveraging stablecoins to achieve this.
STABLECOINS | The Nigeria Stablecoin Boom – $USDT Adoption Surges as Crypto Landscape Evolves
The data shows that the USDT/NGN pair is now among the most actively traded pairs on centralized exchanges in Nigeria, overtaking #Bitcoin.https://t.co/EVCwJk98qz @Tether_to pic.twitter.com/RAggRIUsMh
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) May 6, 2025
One may ask. What is making stablecoins so successful in emerging markets?
4 main reasons:
Faster
Cheaper
Open access
Programmable
Another key reason why stablecoins are on the rise is currency devaluation. One report connected the increasing use of stablecoins with currency devaluation across the continent.
According to the report:
Stablecoins are growing in popularity in Africa, where many countries face economic problems including high levels of inflation, rapid currency depreciation, and a shortage of foreign currency reserves – factors which have long driven cryptocurrency adoption in Africa.
Advocates say the dollar-backed security of genuine stablecoins can be useful for both businesses and individuals wishing to facilitate international payments or simply protect the value of their assets.
The above report is backed by the 2024 Chainalysis report which similarly established a firm correlation between currency devaluations in Africa with increased stablecoin use. The report provides an example of Nigeria – which now ranks second in global crypto adoption indices – where there was a marked increase in relatively small stablecoin transactions of under $1 million after President Bola Tinubu devalued the Naira in June 2023.
This suggests that consumers and small businesses increasingly turned to stablecoins as a proxy for the US dollar – hoping that it would retain its value amid high inflation in Nigeria and a weakening domestic currency.
Similar trends have been seen in Ethiopia. In July last year, the birr was freely floated for the first time as part of a liberalisation programme aimed at securing $10.7bn in loans and financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
In the weeks immediately after, the currency lost as much as 30% in value, while stablecoin use increased. As a result, Ethiopia is now Africa’s “fastest-growing market for retail-sized stablecoin transfers, with 180% growth year-over-year,” according to Chainalysis data.
According to Rob Downes, Head of Digital Assets in ABSA’s Corporate and Investment Banking Division in Johannesburg:
“What started as individuals investing in crypto for expansion and asset growth has evolved into the increasing use of stablecoins for not only diversification purposes, but also to facilitate faster and cheaper cross-border and domestic payments,” he says.
“There are many businesses enabling these services, often for a fraction of the cost of traditional banking solutions and this trend is only going to continue growing as traditional and non-traditional service providers become more integrated.”
However, it is not just small retail investors who are turning to stablecoins. Downes says:
“There is certainly interest from our institutional clients to use stablecoins to manage sovereign currency volatility and inflation in some of our African markets, but there is also interest in using stablecoins for making and receiving payments.
However, there is still some uncertainty from clients – notably in South Africa – on making sure that they do not expose themselves to any regulatory risks with cross-border payments.”
As the demand for stablecoins soars, fintech players within the African continent have taken notice and are looking at how they can leverage stablecoin infrastructure to improve their product offerings.
Companies like Stripe and Tether are looking at offering their stablecoin infrastructure to fintechs to enable more access to stablecoins on the continent.
[TECH] STABLECOINS | ‘We Have 400 Million Users in Emerging Markets – We’re Basically Pushing Dollar Hegemony, Selling U.S Debt Outside the U.S,’ Says Tether CEO: Tether is currently the 17th largest.. https://t.co/B9NgyF7CeK via @BitcoinKE
— Top Kenyan Blogs (@Blogs_Kenya) March 9, 2025
Stripe, which recently introduced its stablecoin infrastructure with a full suite of APIs, now enable fintechs to accept stablecoin payments seamlessly and quickly, with some integrating the offering within weeks.
According to Stripe, stablecoin usage has skyrocketed bypassing Bitcoin usage among its clientelle. According to Stripe:
“Within a week of turning on stablecoins last year [2024], we saw transactions pour in from over 30 countries. We processed more stablecoin transactions in that week than we did an entire year and half with Bitcoin back in 2015.
Today, we’re accepting stablecoin payments in over 100 countries.”
LIST | Here is the List of Countries in #Africa Where Stripe Stablecoin-Based Accounts Are Available
Stablecoin financial account capabilities by Stripe are accessible by business users incorporated in the African markets listed belowhttps://t.co/N5eptkyfbh @stripe @Stablecoin pic.twitter.com/SCzOJrpvtc
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) May 8, 2025
BitKE took time to identify and list some of the African fintechs already leveraging stablecoins in their offerings.
Some of these well-known African or African-facing fintechs includes:
TazaPay
Transfero
Flutterwave
InSwitch
CoinMENA
Onafriq
BCB Group
dLocal
Coins.ph
AZA Finance
Alfred
OpenPayd
BVNK
Legend Trading
GigBanc
DTCPay
TruBit
Chipper Cash
We believe the above African fintechs are just the early adopters and this list will grow as stablecoin adoption grows.
We will continue to update the above list as more fintechs use stablecoins.
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