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A Nigerian business can send an email to a supplier in China in seconds. But paying that supplier can take days. Tomiwa “Aleph” Lasebikan encountered that disconnect repeatedly as the head of product at Y Combinator-backed crypto startup Helicarrier, which he co-founded after leaving Microsoft in 2018. Customers who came to the company for crypto services often had a more practical problem: receiving dollars, paying overseas suppliers, and moving money across borders. Now Lasebikan is betting stablecoins can help solve it. His new startup, Daya, is building a payments platform that helps businesses access dollar liquidity, settle international transactions, and move money across borders using dollar-backed digital currencies. It raised $350,000 from Alliance DAO, a US-based crypto accelerator, in 2025. The startup is part of a growing list of companies building financial infrastructure around stablecoins, arguing that blockchain-based settlement can do for cross-border payments what the Internet did for communication: help businesses move money more quickly across borders. Stablecoin as an alternative rail for businesses Stablecoins as a financial rail for businesses are gaining traction. In 2024, stablecoins settled $15.6 trillion in transactions globally, according to US-based investment manager Ark Invest, a volume comparable to Visa’s and nearly double Mastercard’s. By 2025, that figure grew 79% to $28 trillion, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis. Most of the transaction activities driving stablecoin use cases are economic, including business-to-business (B2B) payments, treasury management, and remittances, according to Chainalysis. Daya is building a business-focused payments platform that connects traditional banking systems with blockchain networks. It provides businesses with dollar-denominated accounts, converts incoming payments into stablecoins for settlement, and allows firms to move funds across borders or convert them into local currency for withdrawal in Nigeria. Founded by Lasebikan and Paul Joe in October 2025, Daya is seeking to capture a share in the global commercial B2B payments market. In 2024, the global B2B cross-border payments market was worth $31.7 trillion and was projected to reach $47.8 trillion by 2032, according to US-based research firm FXC Intelligence, dwarfing consumer remittances. By comparison, consumer remittances totalled $905 billion globally in 2024, according to the World Bank. Businesses move far more money than individuals, yet much of that activity still depends on correspondent banking infrastructure. “The world we’re born into is one where communication across borders is incredibly fast,” Lasebikan said. “But sending money across borders is horrendous.” How Daya’s model works When a business signs up on Daya, it completes know-your-customer (KYC) and know-your-business (KYB) checks, including director-level verification and validation against Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) registry, according to the startup. Once approved, the business receives a dollar-denominated account provided through regulated financial partners in the United States. When a customer abroad sends dollars to that account, the funds are converted into stablecoins and credited to the business’s Daya wallet. From there, businesses can hold stablecoins as dollar-equivalent balances, pay international suppliers, or convert funds into Naira for withdrawal into local bank accounts. To handle currency conversion, Daya aggregates a network of professional over-the-counter (OTC) traders under anti-money laundering (AML)-compliant terms, rather than relying on a single off-ramp partner. The startup charges 0.1%–0.3% per transaction, according to Lasebikan. The model relies on stablecoins as a settlement layer, while regulated banks and payment partners handle fiat onboarding and withdrawals. “The USD account is an account in the US,” Lasebikan said. “Whoever wants to send you money sends funds into this account managed by our partners—reputable, licenced partners in the US. They settle us in stablecoins. So now the user has stablecoins: this is your global money, so to speak. Businesses can hold the stablecoins or convert them to Naira straight into their bank account.” According to Lasebikan, the company is positioning stablecoins as backend infrastructure, with customers primarily focused on receiving payments, accessing dollar accounts, or moving money across borders rather than interacting directly with blockchain technology. Similar approaches are already being used in global payments infrastructure. Bridge, the stablecoin company Stripe acquired in 2025, has built banking-linked settlement rails using stablecoins. Stripe, the payments giant, said in its 2025 annual letter that Bridge’s transaction volume grew more than fourfold. Visa and Mastercard have also expanded stablecoin settlement pilots; companies such as BVNK, the UK-based stablecoin neobank that Mastercard agreed to acquire, are building payment infrastructure around stablecoin rails globally. In Africa, players including Yellow Card, Juicyway, and Conduit are building similar infrastructure for businesses, focusing on cross-border payments and treasury flows. Daya operates in this same category: infrastructure for business payments using stablecoins. A problem older than crypto African banks have historically relied on correspondent banking relationships (CBRs), partnerships that allow local institutions to access the global financial system, clear international payments, and settle foreign currency transactions. But those relationships have been shrinking for years. A 2016 International Finance Corporation (IFC) report warned that African financial institutions were losing correspondent banking relationships as global banks withdrew from markets perceived as higher risk. Compliance costs, anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, and regulatory scrutiny made many relationships economically unattractive. For businesses, the effects are often indirect but significant. Fewer correspondent banking relationships mean fewer payment corridors, more intermediaries, longer settlement times, and higher costs. International transfers that appear simple on the surface often move through multiple institutions before reaching their destination. Since then, the decline of correspondent banking networks has persisted across emerging markets. Stablecoins, especially dollar-backed digital currencies, are increasingly being pitched to fill that gap for businesses in that region, especially in Africa. Why Daya is betting on stablecoin infrastructure For Lasebikan, Daya reflects how much the infrastructure layer around crypto has changed since his first foray into building his former startup and personal projects. He said that early attempts to build crypto products in Africa often meant assembling large parts of the technical stack manually while building in unclear regulatory markets and fragmented banking access. That has shifted. When Lasebikan first entered crypto, startups often had to build large portions of the underlying infrastructure themselves, from blockchain integrations to custody systems. Today,
Read MoreWhen African leaders gathered in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, on May 12 for the Africa Forward Summit, artificial intelligence (AI) took centre stage, alongside energy, agriculture and international finance for the first time. That alone marked a change. Only a few years ago, AI policy on the continent revolved around ethics, digital literacy and startup incubation. Now governments are discussing cloud infrastructure, sovereign data, regional computing capacity and local language models, subjects once confined to engineers and Silicon Valley executives. In the past two years, Kenya has unveiled a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Nigeria has launched its National AI Strategy, Rwanda has established a Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to shape AI governance, South Africa has stepped up work on a national AI policy, while the African Union adopted its Continental AI Strategy calling for African-owned data, compute infrastructure and language models. The shift reflects a growing recognition that artificial intelligence is becoming a geopolitical asset. Just as countries once competed over natural resources and shipping lanes, they are now competing over semiconductors, data centres and computing power. But Africa enters that race from an uncomfortable position. Critical minerals The continent produces many of the minerals that power modern computing and generates some of the world’s fastest-growing volumes of digital data through mobile money, e-commerce and government digitisation. Yet the infrastructure that turns those inputs into economic value largely sits elsewhere. That dependence appears to have informed Section 6 of the Africa Forward Declaration, adopted by African and French leaders in Nairobi. The declaration, signed by 30 heads of state, documents calls for investment in data centres, cloud computing, trusted data systems, broadband infrastructure, and African-led ownership of data and AI systems. “Digital transformation and artificial intelligence are reshaping economies, public services, knowledge systems, security, creative industries, and global competitiveness,” said the declaration, “Africa’s participation in the AI age requires investment across the full digital and AI stack.” Despite accounting for nearly 20% of the world’s population and some of its fastest-growing internet markets, the continent still hosts less than 1% of global data-centre capacity, according to industry estimates. Mobile data consumption is growing at roughly 40% annually—almost twice the global average—but the infrastructure needed to process and store that information remains severely constrained. A decade ago, African startups could build globally competitive products using rented cloud services and relatively modest computing resources. Generative AI has changed the economics entirely. Training and deploying frontier models requires thousands of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), sophisticated cooling systems, and uninterrupted electricity supplies. African governments’ investment in AI infrastructure is still low, with most commitments coming from the private sector and development finance institutions (DFIs). In April, the International Finance Corporation committed $100 million to regional data-centre operator Raxio Group, its largest investment in African digital infrastructure, backing facilities from Ethiopia to Angola as demand for cloud services and AI workloads accelerates. The World Bank’s investment reflects a growing recognition that digital infrastructure has become as important to economic development as roads and ports. Private investments Cassava Technologies, founded by Zimbabwean telecoms billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, announced in July 2025 plans to deploy Nvidia-powered AI infrastructure across Africa through a $700 million investment programme, positioning itself as one of the continent’s first large-scale AI compute providers. In 2024, Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-based AI company G42 unveiled an ambitious $1 billion AI data centre in Kenya, powered by geothermal energy. The project has since been put on hold. Some of these investments, like the Kenyan one, illustrate the continent’s infrastructure constraints. Negotiations have stalled over electricity requirements and financing arrangements, with Kenyan officials acknowledging that the original proposal would require more power capacity than the country can currently dedicate to a single data centre. Discussions continue, but they show that computing power requires supporting infrastructure, which the continent currently struggles to provide. It is forcing policymakers to rethink AI as much an infrastructure question as a technology one. The Nairobi Declaration referred to this, shifting debates on AI investments to the centre of the continent’s economic policy. “We commit to mobilise public and private investment in resilient digital infrastructure and AI infrastructure, including broadband connectivity, regional data centres, cloud and compute capacity, clean energy and trusted data systems,” African heads of state declared. The implications stretch far beyond data centres. For much of the past decade, Africa’s digital ambitions have been defined by rising smartphone adoption, the spread of fintech, and the emergence of startup hubs from Lagos and Nairobi to Cape Town. Artificial intelligence is changing that conversation. The focus is shifting away from consumer applications and towards the infrastructure that enables them. The same shift is taking place around the world. In the US, AI leadership has become intertwined with national security, with the Trump administration accelerating investment in AI infrastructure and treating advanced AI capabilities as a strategic asset in geopolitical competition with China. Washington has issued executive orders to accelerate data centre construction and strengthen America’s AI technology stack, while officials have described AI as critical to maintaining economic and military leadership. Gulf states are deploying sovereign wealth to finance hyperscale data centres and semiconductor partnerships. Europe, meanwhile, increasingly frames AI through the lens of technological sovereignty rather than simply innovation policy. Africa is beginning to adopt a similar approach. The Nairobi declaration repeatedly emphasises digital sovereignty, African ownership of data and the development of local AI ecosystems. It also calls for African language models, locally generated datasets and open-weight AI systems, reflecting a growing recognition among policymakers that AI is not just another software industry but a strategic asset that could shape future economic growth. Technological sovereignty comes with a substantial price tag, which the continent might not marshal soon. Building a competitive AI ecosystem requires far more than skilled engineers. It depends on reliable electricity, fibre networks, advanced chips, research capacity and billions of dollars in patient capital. For many African governments already facing fiscal constraints and competing development priorities, those investments remain difficult to finance. But the declaration’s
Read MoreFamily Bank, a Kenyan bank with assets worth KES 230.3 billion ($1.78 billion), has received the Capital Markets Authority’s approval to list on the Nairobi Securities Exchange on June 23. The listing will allow existing shareholders to trade their shares on the NSE without raising new capital. It comes after Family Bank raised KES 8 billion ($61.8 million) in a 2025 private placement, exceeding its KES 6.09 billion ($47.1 million) target. The move ends the lender’s five-year-long push to go public and comes at a time when the NSE is seeking to attract new listings after a prolonged bear run. Most recent market activity has been driven by secondary share sales, bond issues and rights offers rather than initial public offerings (IPOs). “The decision for the Bank to list follows years of strategic preparation to ensure we list from a position of strength,” Family Bank Managing Director Nancy Njau said in a statement on Thursday. Family Bank will now join publicly listed banks including KCB Group, Equity Group, NCBA and DTB Group. The stocks are among the most traded on the NSE, driven by the sector’s strong performance over the past five years, according to NSE data. The listing will provide a public market valuation for Family Bank, founded in 1984 as Family Finance Building Society. It secured a commercial banking licence in 2007 and has grown into one of Kenya’s largest tier-two lenders. Family Bank said in the statement that it does not need additional capital to support the listing, citing its capital position and balance sheet strength. The lender’s shareholders include founder Titus Muya and his family, as well as the Kenya Tea Development Agency, one of its largest institutional investors. “Through the capital raising initiatives, we have strengthened our balance sheet and remain confident in our strategy, our capital position, and our ability to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value. The bank is well positioned for growth as per our 2025 – 2029 strategic plan anchored on being The Preferred Bank for Biashara,” said Njau. The bank is entering the public market after posting its strongest financial performance on record. Profit after tax rose 52.6% to KES 1.6 billion ($12.4 million) in the first quarter ended March 2026, while total assets grew 32.3% to KES 230.3 billion ($1.78 billion). Customer deposits increased to KES 168.2 billion ($1.30 billion) and net loans rose 12.6% to KES 108.4 billion ($838 million). Standard Investment Bank is the lead transaction adviser, while PwC Kenya is the reporting accountant and Mboya Wangong’u & Waiyaki Advocates is the legal adviser.
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