• Scrypt has expanded its licensed stablecoin settlement infrastructure into Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda.
• Businesses can now convert local currencies directly into stablecoins without first sourcing US dollars.
• The move reflects a broader shift toward stablecoins becoming enterprise payment infrastructure rather than speculative crypto assets.

Doing business across African borders has long been defined by a frustrating paradox. To send money to a neighbour, you almost always have to route it through an ocean. Historically, a business trying to settle an invoice across East African borders had to convert local currency to US dollars, route it through European or US banks, and then convert it back to the destination local currency. That process was expensive and inefficient.

SCRYPT, a Swiss-licensed digital asset infrastructure provider, is directly targeting this inefficiency. The company announced the expansion of its stablecoin settlement rails into four core East African markets. The markets are Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Through this expansion, SCRYPT’s institutional clients can now settle transactions between local currencies in these markets and stablecoins in real time. The network directly supports the Kenyan Shilling, the Tanzanian Shilling, the Rwandan Franc, and the Ugandan Shilling.

SCRYPT’s FINMA-regulated corridors offer businesses a compliant local-currency-to-stablecoin flow.

The Core Problem: Navigating the USD Liquidity Squeeze

One recurring pain point for businesses in Africa is structural liquidity. US dollar shortages are a persistent challenge in emerging markets. Central banks, striving to preserve foreign exchange reserves, frequently ration access to the dollar.

When an East African importer needs to pay a global supplier, they cannot simply wire their local currency. As of 2017, only 20% of all cross-border commercial payments sent by African banks remained within the continent.

It often requires converting local fiat to scarce US dollars or Euros. Those funds move through sluggish correspondent banking systems before finally getting to the recipient. Banks in North America, mainly the US, received 39.5% of all payments sent by Africa in 2017. More than 80% of the transactions sent from Africa to the United States had their final beneficiary in another region. One of the two main regions where the payment was eventually made was Africa.

Scrypt Aims to Simplify the Process

This path is slow, often taking three to five business days, and expensive. Africa is the most expensive continent to send money to and within. Cross-border transactions through traditional channels can cost between 7% and 20% of the transaction value. Sending 200 dollars to East Africa, where SCRYPT has recently expanded, costs an average of 9.9%.

This cost, driven by foreign exchange spreads of 3% to 8% applied by banks and payment intermediaries, and correspondent banking fees of USD 15–50 per transaction at each intermediary hop, often heavily impacts businesses’ profit margins.

The World Bank estimates that cheaper cross-border payments could improve trade and generate USD 292 billion in income gains for Africa.

SCRYPT’s stablecoin settlement rails simplify this trajectory into a streamlined, single-step corridor. Local currency is converted directly into stablecoins such as USDC or USDT.

This removes the intermediate US dollar conversion step, thereby reducing costs and settlement times and taking operational pressure off local treasury teams.

From Speculative Asset to Treasury Tool

The true narrative of this expansion is about the maturation of blockchain technology into enterprise financial plumbing.

Stablecoin adoption in Africa is on the rise. Initially driven by speculative trading, stablecoins found a use case as a hedge against currency volatility in many African countries by the early 2020s. Nigeria, the continent’s largest market, accounts for an estimated 60% of all stablecoin inflows.

Today, stablecoins have moved from primarily being used for trading in Africa to being critical tools for treasury management and the movement of working capital.

Africa as a Stablecoin Laboratory

SCRYPT’s expansion aligns with a broader trend across the continent. African fintech infrastructure is actively being rebuilt around stablecoin rails.

Ripple has invested in Flutterwave to accelerate RLUSD-powered settlement. Circle Ventures has separately backed Flutterwave’s USDC strategy. Visa, M-PESA, and Onafriq have piloted stablecoin-based payments in the DRC. AEON has expanded crypto payments into Zambia. Polygon has formed partnerships focused on stablecoin payments in Africa. HyperFX has used cNGN and other stablecoins for instant FX settlement.

Almost every major infrastructure announcement in African fintech recently has centred around stablecoin-powered payments.

Why East Africa is the Perfect Sandbox

The East African Community is a powerhouse of intra-regional trade. It is characterised by a highly entrepreneurial SME sector and a robust mobile money penetration across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

In 2025, East Africa had an estimated 537 million registered mobile money accounts. Mobile money transaction value grew 23% to $806 billion over 61 billion transactions, the largest in the continent. Businesses in this corridor are uniquely positioned to adopt digital ledger technology.

However, trading smoothly with global counterparties in Europe, the Gulf, and Asia has always been limited by the availability of foreign exchange. Placing regulated stablecoin settlement atop these highly digitised economies is what SCRYPT plans to do.

There is some progress with regulation in East Africa, although it remains uneven. Kenya has moved the furthest in the region in terms of regulations, enacting its VASP Act in 2025. Tanzania and Rwanda are currently developing their own regulatory guidelines.

What This Means for the Future of African Fintech

SCRYPT’s East African corridors hint at three major shifts for the regional payment ecosystem.

First, the battle is moving entirely to infrastructure. The real battle is happening at the structural settlement layer. Companies are now competing to own the most compliant, high-throughput rails that connect local businesses to international networks.

Second, banks could become silent consumers of this technology. Rather than viewing digital assets as a threat to their business model, progressive African banks can take a leaf out of the books of global payment icons like Mastercard and Visa to leverage stablecoins behind the scenes. By using B2B settlement corridors, banks can optimize their internal liquidity and manage foreign exchange risk exposure. They could also offer faster international transfers to their enterprise clients without locking up large reserves in correspondent accounts.

Third, stablecoins are becoming invisible. In the near future, the average consumer may not even realise they are using blockchain technology. To them, the process will simply feel like a local currency transfer. It’ll settle in minutes rather than days, and users will get a transparent conversion rate and drastically lower fees.

SCRYPT’S corridors and other similar developments don’t completely eliminate FX or regulatory friction. They do not completely replace banks, but they are promising solutions and alternatives. For SCRYPT, measurable adoption data, rather than the announcement itself, will be the real test of how much friction it actually removes.

Originally published at https://cryptoafrica.news on July 17, 2026.

Scrypt Expands Stablecoin Settlement Rails Across Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• ForgeLayer has replaced its fixed monthly subscription with a pay-as-you-go pricing model after receiving customer feedback.
• The company says businesses were hesitant to commit to recurring fees before proving the product’s value.
• The change reflects a broader trend in B2B fintech, where reducing adoption friction can be more important than maximising short-term revenue.
• The move raises an interesting question: should more African crypto infrastructure startups adopt usage-based pricing?

ForgeLayer announced that it’s taking customer feedback and offering a pay-as-you-go alternative to its previous subscription model. One must consider the cost implications for the industry and not just its customers, and the potential ripple effects.

ForgeLayer provides non-custodial crypto payment infrastructure for businesses looking to integrate crypto products without spending time and resources building blockchain infrastructure from scratch.

ForgeLayer Is Rethinking How Crypto Infrastructure Is Sold

The new model charges a flat 0.3% per successful transaction, rather than the flat recurring monthly charge businesses would incur regardless of the volume processed. Companies that process sufficient volume and aren’t as concerned about cost can still opt to pay for the subscription plan, which removes per-transaction fees.

ForgeLayer’s infrastructure provides plugins for WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, PHP, React, and Node JS to accelerate dev adoption.

For smaller businesses, this new pricing system reduces the barrier to entry and allows them to try out this new product without committing a large amount. According to the community manager for ForgeLayer, Lilian Jessica,

Customers were saying they wanted to implement our platform, but having to pay without any guarantee that they’d make that amount back in a month was difficult. We went back to the drawing board and looked at our mission, which is making it easier for businesses that want to go global.

Pricing is Part of Product-Market Fit

Infrastructure product providers, especially in Africa, must consider this: if you want your business to scale, you must understand your customers’ pain points. If this customer base consists of African businesses and startups, you should ideally be aware of and ready to accommodate their cost-related challenges.

Infrastructure products compete on more than technical features. They compete on API pricing, onboarding friction, implementation time, and developer experience. Your API could be great, but adoption will still stall if businesses have to pay high fees to see any value.

In that sense, pricing is not separate from the product because it shapes who is willing to try it and determines how quickly they can.

Why Pay-as-You-Go Makes Sense for African Businesses

In the first quarter of 2026, companies in the USA and Canada secured over $250 billion in funding. In comparison, African startups raised $705 million in the same time period. The general idea most people have about tech companies, regardless of industry, is that if the idea and your plan are good, the funding will come. African entrepreneurs know this is not always true.

Many small and medium enterprises across Africa operate with limited cash flow. What some might consider too cautious or frugal is standard practice. When you secure funding, you need to use it diligently. When you spend, the spending must be justified.

A Usage-Based Model Aligns Costs with Business Growth

African businesses need the option of experimenting with the product before making any long-term commitments. Offering usage-based billing ties what a business pays to what it earns, making the cost easier to justify.

If a merchant processes zero crypto transactions, then they do not have to pay. This is especially ideal for African fintechs, online businesses, and SaaS platforms that are testing crypto for the first time.

Stablecoin adoption across the continent is on the rise, with Sub-Saharan Africa leading the world and the region at a 9.3% adoption rate. Stablecoins accounted for 43% of total cryptocurrency transaction volume in the region in 2024, with strong use for retail and cross-border payments. Businesses will want to tap into this. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that crypto payments will take off for any business. However, this model lowers the cost of finding out.

Could Other African Crypto Infrastructure Companies Follow?

Reducing adoption friction has become a major competitive advantage in fintech. Other crypto infrastructure firms in Africa could increase their adoption rate by offering usage-based models. Whether you’re offering stablecoin payment APIs, wallet infrastructure, or compliance tools, this is worth considering.

Yellow Card recently discontinued their retail arm and has spent time repositioning itself around B2B and institutional clients. Its widespread regulatory credibility is its competitive advantage. Opera’s Mini Pay has embedded a stablecoin wallet directly into a browser that millions of Africans already use, stripping out friction.

Across the continent, Fintechs are exploring ways to reduce the hurdles to adoption for their clients. Flutterwave has spent its year improving and deepening its stablecoin integration. Paga, via partnerships with SUI and TBook, has also explored stablecoin accounts and tokenized assets this year.

While the mechanisms for reducing adoption across these businesses have differed from ForgeLayer’s pricing change, the instinct is similar. The point is not for other crypto infrastructure providers to unthinkingly copy ForgeLayer. The goal, however, is to recognize the various pain points and barriers that could delay integration and to work with that in mind.

Reducing friction is a competitive axis for African crypto infrastructure.

African Infrastructure Companies are Selling Trust, Not Just Technology

In the African market, earning trust is just as important as building the right product. It doesn’t matter if the product is B2B or B2C; you need to build trust. How do you get businesses to trust you in a market typically considered “low trust?”

For most businesses, choosing an infrastructure provider is a big deal. That infrastructure will be part of your business’s foundation. You need to ask yourself certain questions about reliability and about cost. Will this provider be here in two or three years? Is the service they are offering me worth the money? Will the eventual transaction volume justify the cost?

All these questions can be condensed into one question. Is it worth it?

Companies like Lazerpay, a Nigerian crypto payments startup once pitched as the “Stripe for crypto,” shut down in 2023 after failing to raise much-needed funding. Lazerpay is an example that crypto infrastructure on the continent has a genuine mortality rate.

Usage-based billing reduces perceived risk for cautious executives. If the provider’s earnings are tied to the merchant’s earnings, it increases trust. Businesses are more inclined to believe you will do right by them, as your success is intertwined with theirs. In a market with so many uncertainties, commercial empathy and lower financial friction could ultimately create higher long-term adoption.

Lessons Crypto Infrastructure Could Learn From Saas And Cloud Computing

Traditional technology giants popularised consumption-based billing long ago. Amazon Web Services, Twilio, and Stripe built empires using this framework. OpenAI also prices its AI models based on direct usage.

​These companies rarely demanded massive upfront financial commitments from early adopters. Instead, customers paid per API call or per transaction. They paid per compute hour or per message sent. Crypto infrastructure is moving in this same direction globally. ForgeLayer is adapting a proven software model to African digital finance.

As blockchain tools become commoditized, technical features look identical. Providers must find new ways to stand out in a crowded market. Business model innovation is becoming the new frontier for enterprise software.

​Why This Matters

​The pricing change might look like a minor product update. However, it reflects a major shift in how crypto platforms acquire users. Technical innovation alone is no longer enough to win the market.

​As competition intensifies, providers will differentiate through their commercial models. Onboarding experiences and customer success will dictate who wins the continent. Financial tools must adapt to the economic realities of local businesses.

​Companies that make experimenting with stablecoins cheap will drive mainstream adoption. They allow traditional Web2 firms to test Web3 tools safely. By removing fixed overheads, ForgeLayer changes the risk equation for African commerce. The future of regional crypto infrastructure depends heavily on lowering the cost of discovery.

Originally published at https://cryptoafrica.news on July 9, 2026.

Why ForgeLayer’s Pay-as-You-Go Model Could Accelerate Crypto Infrastructure Adoption in Africa was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As you go further into the world of crypto, certain terms begin to appear more frequently. Some of those terms, especially in conversations about blockchain, are Layer 1, Layer 2, and base layers.

While it sounds like complex technical jargon, the concept is straightforward. Think of the crypto ecosystem as a high-rise building. That building needs a foundation; Layer 1 is that foundation.

It is the core infrastructure that makes everything else possible. Whether you are sending Bitcoin to a friend, trading digital art, or using stablecoins for business payments, every transaction ultimately relies on a Layer 1 network.

What Is a Layer 1 Blockchain?

A Layer 1 blockchain is the foundational, base level of a blockchain network.

It is an independent digital ledger that processes, validates, and finalizes its own transactions without relying on another network.

Cities need governments to function in the same way crypto applications need a Layer 1 blockchain to function.

A true Layer 1 blockchain handles all the heavy lifting of a network. It manages transaction processing by recording every transfer of value. It ensures security by protecting the network against fraud. It creates consensus so computers around the world agree on which transactions are valid, and maintains the permanent, unchangeable history of the entire network.

Why Is It Called “Layer 1”?

The term Layer 1 derives from blockchain technology’s built-in tiered structure.

Layer 1 is the base layer where security and final settlement happen. Layer 2 represents secondary networks built on top of Layer 1 to handle massive amounts of transactions at lightning-fast speeds. Later, the final data is shifted back to Layer 1. The application layer sits at the very top. It represents user-facing apps such as crypto wallets and decentralized exchanges.

Occasionally, you might hear whispers of Layer 0 networks that connect different Layer 1s, or Layer 3 networks for hyper-specific applications. Regardless, Layer 1 remains the primary anchor for the entire system.

What Does a Layer 1 Blockchain Actually Do?

Layer 1 blockchain coordinates thousands of independent computers, called nodes, spread across the globe to perform several key functions.

First, it handles transaction processing by picking up your transfer, verifying that you actually have the funds, and preparing to log it into the ledger.

Second, because there is no central bank or CEO in charge, the network needs a built-in mechanism to ensure everyone agrees on the truth. This is called a blockchain consensus mechanism.

In a Proof of Work system, as used by Bitcoin, computers expend computational effort to solve complex mathematical puzzles to secure the network.

In a Proof of Stake system, used by Ethereum, participants lock up a portion of the network’s native cryptocurrency to earn the right to validate transactions.

Finally, Layer 1 networks provide distributed security by distributing copies of the ledger across thousands of nodes worldwide, making it incredibly difficult for a bad actor to alter past data.

Once a transaction is added to a block, it achieves finality, meaning it is permanently recorded in the blockchain and cannot be reversed.

Popular Examples of Layer 1s

Not all Layer 1 blockchains are built for the same purpose, and different networks make different trade-offs depending on what they want to achieve.

The Bitcoin blockchain was the world’s first Layer 1 network, designed to serve as a secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency that uses Proof of Work. It prioritizes maximum security and does not natively support complex applications.

The Ethereum blockchain was built on this foundation by introducing smart contracts, self-executing digital agreements written in code. This turned Ethereum into a programmable global computer running on Proof of Stake, allowing developers to build decentralized applications directly on top of it.

Solana was built to address the speed limitations of older networks by combining Proof of Stake with an innovative tracking system called Proof of History. This allows Solana to process tens of thousands of transactions per second with incredibly low fees, making it ideal for high-frequency trading and consumer applications.

Avalanche uses a unique consensus structure to deliver nearly instant transaction finality. This allows developers to launch custom, interoperable blockchains called subnets for complex decentralized finance projects.

BNB Chain utilizes a highly efficient consensus model to provide a faster, cheaper alternative to Ethereum, hosting thousands of gaming and Web3 applications with minimal transaction costs for the everyday user.

Why Layer 1 Matters: The Foundation Everything Depends On

Without Layer 1 blockchains, the entire crypto industry would cease to exist. They are the bedrock of Web3.

If a Layer 1 network goes offline or experiences a glitch, every single asset built on top of it stops working. Without Layer 1, there are no crypto wallets, no decentralized finance lending protocols, no NFTs, no token transfers, and no stablecoins pegged to local fiat currencies.

Every digital asset you interact with is ultimately just a line of code living on a Layer 1 network.

The Biggest Challenge: The Blockchain Trilemma

If Layer 1 blockchains are so revolutionary, why aren’t they perfect?

The answer lies in a concept coined by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin called The Blockchain Trilemma. The trilemma states that a blockchain can generally achieve only two of three core properties at any given time: decentralization, security, and scalability.

Bitcoin and Ethereum traditionally prioritized decentralization and security, which led to slow speeds and high fees during peak periods.

Solana, on the other hand, prioritized scalability and security, making architectural trade-offs that require more powerful, centralized hardware to run a network node.

Improving one of these pillars almost always affects another.

How Layer 1 Blockchains Scale

Layer 1 blockchains are not static. Developers actively implement core upgrades to directly address the scalability bottleneck at the base layer.

One major technique is sharding, which divides the main blockchain into smaller, manageable pieces that process transactions in parallel, increasing the network’s throughput.

Another method is increasing block sizes. This increases the data capacity of each block, allowing the network to process more transactions at once.

Developers also rely on consensus upgrades, such as Ethereum’s historic shift from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, which drastically reduced energy consumption and laid the groundwork for future speed upgrades to the blockchain itself.

Why Layer 1 Blockchains Matter for Africa

Layer 1 infrastructure is actively driving a financial revolution across Africa.

The continent’s booming fintech sector increasingly relies on these networks to address real-world economic challenges such as high inflation and foreign exchange scarcity.

This has driven immense demand for digital dollars across countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.

Popular stablecoins like USDT and USDC, alongside local innovations like the cNGN, do not exist in isolation. They are minted and moved directly on Layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.

Traditional cross-border money transfers within Africa are notoriously slow and expensive. However, innovative African fintech companies are quietly changing this by using Layer 1 rails behind the scenes.

Yellow Card utilizes Layer 1 stability to facilitate seamless crypto-to-fiat ramps across more than 20 African nations.

Flutterwave has historically integrated blockchain capabilities to enable faster settlement of cross-border transactions.

Every Stablecoin Payment Starts With a Layer 1

The beauty of Layer 1 today is that the average user doesn’t need to know how a consensus mechanism works.

When someone uses a fintech app to send funds from Nairobi to Accra, they experience a smooth, cheap transfer.

They don’t interact with a command line; they don’t even need to familiarize themselves with crypto, but under the hood, a Layer 1 blockchain is securely settling that value.

Layer 1 and Layer 2 are not competitors but teammates.

Layer 2 networks will continue to make crypto transactions faster and cheaper. However, they rely on the unshakeable security of a Layer 1 network to finalize those transactions.

Layer 1 blockchains are the digital infrastructure making the global decentralized economy possible.

From securing billions of dollars in global wealth to powering daily cross-border remittances across Africa, Layer 1 remains the most critical foundation in Web3.

Originally published at https://cryptoafrica.news on July 1, 2026.

Layer 1 Blockchain Explained: The Foundation of Crypto Networks was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• Nigeria and Rwanda have signed a cooperation agreement covering capital markets and digital asset regulation.
• The agreement aims to improve regulatory coordination, information sharing, and oversight as crypto adoption grows across Africa.
• It follows Rwanda’s Virtual Assets Business legislation and Nigeria’s implementation of the Investments and Securities Act 2025.
• The partnership reflects a broader shift from isolated national regulation toward regional cooperation.

Rwanda’s Capital Markets Authority and Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission signed a memorandum of understanding facilitated by United Capital Plc.

Officials confirmed the framework explicitly extends to virtual assets, covering information sharing, joint investigations, licensing exchanges, and investor education campaigns.

The MoU follows Rwanda’s enactment of its first Virtual Asset Law, which places the sector under the oversight of the CMA and the BNR.

Nigeria also recently advanced a crypto bill and has spent the past year operationalizing the Investments and Securities Act 2025. The Act folded digital assets into the SEC’s mandate as securities.

Both regulators arrive at this partnership with freshly expanded legal toolkits, which is part of what makes the cooperation possible now rather than a few years ago.

Why This Partnership Matters Now

Nigeria is the largest crypto market on the continent and consistently ranks amongst the top markets in the world.

Nigeria received over $92 billion in crypto between July 2024 and June 2025, driven by its youthful population. Rwanda, by contrast, is a smaller market. In January 2023, BNR reported that over $ 3 million in crypto has been traded in Rwanda since 2020.

Rwanda has been deliberately positioning itself as a continental fintech hub with the implementation of the National Fintech Strategy.

The agreement between the two signals that both governments are moving past the question of whether crypto should be allowed and into the harder work of collaborative supervision.

That shift mirrors a pattern playing out globally. Regulators in mature and emerging markets alike are treating digital assets as a functioning piece of financial infrastructure, and responding with increased collaboration.

Africa Is Quietly Building Cross-Border Crypto Regulation

Africa’s crypto-regulatory arc has moved through fairly distinct phases. Bans, warnings, and outright uncertainty defined the first. Central banks across the continent, including Nigeria’s, issued repeated warnings against banks engaging in crypto.

The second phase, still underway in places like Kenya and Ghana, has been about building the basics: licensing regimes, VASP laws, and early stablecoin guardrails.

The Nigeria-Rwanda pact indicates this phase includes regulatory interoperability. Digital assets don’t respect borders, and a purely domestic licensing regime can only catch so much.

More emerging markets seeking to develop a more structured regulatory arc will engage in bilateral plumbing going forward. This might include shared licensing standards, joint AML supervision, coordinated fraud investigations, and faster information sharing between regulators.

The Fight Against Fraud Requires Cross-Border Oversight

Investor protection is one of the stated motivations behind the agreement, and it’s not hard to see why.

In April 2025, the SEC issued a warning, dissuading Nigerians from using CBEX, thereby triggering its collapse. CBEX positioned itself as a crypto trading platform but was actually a ponzi scheme.

Many platforms reported up to $800 million wiped out as a result. The devastation triggered street protests and was a glaring reminder of the exposure and risk that retail users faced.

Crypto fraud is structurally difficult for any single country to police alone. Scam operators frequently run platforms from one jurisdiction, route funds through offshore exchanges, and move wallets across borders faster than any one regulator can track.

Better coordination between Nigeria and Rwanda, which could include shared intelligence on suspicious platforms, joint case referrals, and coordinated asset tracing, can meaningfully improve investigations and enforcement.

It’s worth noting this isn’t a crypto-specific failing; it’s the same cross-border enforcement gap that has long challenged digital finance more broadly. Coordination narrows that gap; it doesn’t close it entirely.

What This Means for Stablecoins and African Fintechs

Closer regulatory alignment between Nigeria and Rwanda carries practical implications well beyond the two countries’ borders.

Companies operating settlement rails across African markets could eventually face more predictable, consistent compliance expectations rather than a patchwork of unrelated rules.

For fintechs trying to expand regionally, navigating separate licensing regimes in each jurisdiction is costly and hinders scaling across the continent.

For banks, payment providers, and global investors, growing cooperation between national regulators could accelerate institutional comfort with stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure.

Is Africa Moving Toward a Unified Crypto Market?

The bigger question the agreement raises is whether Africa is inching toward something resembling harmonized digital-asset regulation.

Nigeria has already built similar cooperation arrangements with Ghana, Egypt, and South Africa. Kenya recently enacted its own Virtual Asset Service Providers Act. Zimbabwe and Ghana have rolled out their own registration and policy regimes, each at different stages of maturity.

A single, unified African crypto law remains unlikely in the near term; the continent’s regulatory landscape is still too uneven. Countries like Ethiopia still have outright prohibitory laws on crypto, while South Africa and Nigeria have relatively mature licensing frameworks.

But the direction of travel is toward shared principles: common approaches to licensing, AML supervision, and consumer protection, built through a growing web of bilateral agreements rather than a single continental treaty.

The Next Phase and Future Implications

The shift in regulatory posture across the continent could end up mattering as much as any individual country’s crypto law.

For African businesses building cross-border payment infrastructure and stablecoin networks, the potential introduction of predictable rules across multiple markets is a welcome development.

The next phase of Africa’s crypto evolution may not be driven by new technology at all, but by how well its regulators learn to talk to one another.

Originally published at https://cryptoafrica.news on June 30, 2026.

Nigeria and Rwanda Join Forces to Tackle Crypto Fraud was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• cNGN has processed roughly $145 million in trading volume and about 350,000 transactions since launching in 2025.
• Despite that growth, many Nigerian fintechs have not integrated the regulated naira stablecoin.
• Industry leaders argue the challenge isn’t regulation or technology — it’s economics, developer adoption, liquidity, and distribution.
• The story highlights the broader challenge facing local-currency stablecoins across Africa.

The Compliant Naira, cNGN for short, issued by WrappedCBDC under the African Stablecoin Consortium, launched in February 2025.

cNGN is a Nigerian stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the Nigerian Naira. It was issued under the 2025 Investments and Securities Act, which grants the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) authority over digital assets. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) retains oversight of payment systems.

For WrappedCBDC, the motivation behind creating cNGN was the difficulty Nigerians faced buying dollar-based stablecoins. The company also sought to address the loss of value incurred due to transaction fees when converting those stablecoins back to naira.

The cNGN is not the first digital asset foray tied to the Nigerian Naira. In October 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria launched the eNaira. While the latter is a state-issued digital currency, cNGN is privately managed and blockchain-native.

cNGN Has Activity, But Adoption Remains Narrow

cNGN has recorded nearly ₦200 billion (~$145 million) in total Traded Volume across approximately 350,000 onchain transactions as of writing.

These numbers make it one of Africa’s most active regulated local-currency stablecoin projects by transaction value. But the numbers tell only part of the story. The transaction count and the total number of holders, which is slightly over 5,300, suggest activity remains concentrated.

This concentration indicates that cNGN isn’t being used for widespread merchant payments, retail purchases, or remittances, indicating low adoption.

Transaction value and ecosystem adoption are distinct metrics, and on the second measure, cNGN still has ground to cover.

Why Fintechs Aren’t Integrating cNGN

Speaking at the 2nd Edition of the Crypto & DeFi Forum, Seun Langele, co-founder of Polytope Labs and former Ethereum developer, said cNGN’s biggest problem isn’t the technology.

cNGN has been live for over a year now; like, how many people are actually building applications on cNGN? How many fintechs have integrated it?

We can philosophize all we want on how we can become infrastructure builders. Still, if we operate in a culture that is distrustful of new technology, then that is not a welcoming environment for builders.

Harri Obi, Former Regional (Africa) Marketing Manager for Bitget and lead at SuperteamNG, shares similar sentiments.

For the few fintechs I’ve spoken to, the economics aren’t compelling enough. If they’re already settling via bank transfers or dollar stablecoins, adding another asset means engineering work, compliance reviews, treasury management, and liquidity provisioning.

Unless CNGN can significantly lower costs, improve settlement speed, or unlock new revenue, it’s hard to justify prioritizing it over existing infrastructure.

That economic calculus matters enormously in a sector already stretched thin. Every new payment rail a fintech integrates creates real costs. In a capital-tight market, spending that money requires justification.

One X user said, “We were looking to add cNGN for the new agricultural investment we pushed on our platform. After all the bottlenecks, we just went with direct bank transfers, because it wasn’t worth it.”

Seun Langele also believes that “cNGN is not without its issues, which primarily are low liquidity for cNGN/NGN.”

However, he “expects people to be enthusiastic and speculate on what it can become in its final form, not meet it with irrational skepticism whenever it’s brought up.”

The Real Problem Isn’t Technology — It’s Distribution

cNGN has the technology. It has the regulatory license. According to Harri Obi, what it lacks is the network of developers, merchants, and builders needed to make it indispensable.

Beyond fintechs and businesses, CNGN’s most important adoption drivers are developers, i.e blockchain ecosystems and developer communities. Yet I haven’t seen CNGN invest meaningfully in developer activations, technical workshops, or hackathons at scale.

Stablecoins need ecosystems, not just licenses. M-Pesa did not become dominant because of a government mandate or even its license. It grew because it solved a problem; M-Pesa made sending money cheaper and simpler than any alternative.

USDT and USDC did not achieve global reach through regulatory approval alone; they solved a distribution problem by becoming the default rails that developers and merchants actually built on.

cNGN needs the same. Where are the public APIs? The grant programs? The merchant integrations? The developer documentation that makes it easier to build with cNGN than without it? These are the building blocks of adoption, and right now, they remain underdeveloped.

The Competition Is Harder Than It Looks

cNGN is not competing in a vacuum. Domestically, it sits alongside a mature payments infrastructure.

Between 2022 and 2024, the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS) Instant Payments Platform (NIP) saw a 120% rise in processed transactions, from N5 billion to N11 billion. This figure places Nigeria among the most active real-time payments markets in the world.

Moniepoint, PalmPay, OPay, and Flutterwave have already captured deep merchant and consumer loyalty across their respective infrastructures.

These Neobanks provided reliable transfers when traditional banks had unreliable apps and USSD. They provided free transfers and referral bonuses, lowering transaction costs. During Nigeria’s cash scarcity in 2023, its tech infrastructure didn’t collapse amid the surge in digital transactions.

Flutterwave solved the heavily fragmented African payment landscape and became a unicorn.

Internationally, the competitive picture is even steeper. Nigerians continue to choose USDT and USDC over cNGN. The IMF recently issued Nigeria a warning regarding the use of dollar-pegged stablecoins in the country.

According to a 2026 BVNK report, Nigeria leads the world in the adoption of a dollar-pegged stablecoin. 87% of respondents currently/recently held stablecoins, and 80% planned to acquire them.

Amongst the respondents, nearly 60% owned USDT and an estimated 48% held USDC. For many, these stablecoins protect them from currency depreciation, are much easier to access than cNGN, and make remittances cheaper.

Beyond that, USDT and USDC also carry years of liquidity, wallet support, exchange integrations, and developer tooling that cNGN cannot yet match.

This means cNGN isn’t creating a new market from scratch. It is trying to replace, or at minimum, compete with, deeply entrenched payment behavior on two fronts simultaneously.

What This Means for Africa’s Local Stablecoin Movement

cNGN’s challenge is not unique to Nigeria. Across the continent, countries are exploring the regulation of local-currency stablecoins.

ZARU, a stablecoin backed 1:1 to the Rand, launched in February 2026. Luno, Sanlam, EasyEquities, and Lesaka launched the project.

In May 2026, Tanzania greenlit its first stablecoin sandbox pilot to test nTZS, a stablecoin pegged to the Tanzanian shilling.

Kenya continues to refine its stablecoin regulatory framework. Each project will confront the same structural question: what comes after the license?

State-backed digital currency, eNaira, serves as a cautionary tale. Despite launching 2 years prior, by 2023, less than 1% of banking customers used the eNaira. Less than 2% of those who downloaded the eNaira wallet actually used it.

The eNaira accounts for less than 1% of total currency in circulation. The low adoption is attributed partly to low bank penetration rates and restrictions on how much retail users could hold. Regulatory approval, in that case, was never enough to drive real-world use.

Successful projects will need to prioritize problem-solving and ecosystem-building as urgently as they pursue regulatory approval.

Regulation Doesn’t Create Product-Market Fit

Africa’s recent wave of crypto regulation has focused heavily on licensing, compliance, and oversight, all of which are necessary. Despite the cNGN doing everything right, regulation-wise, one thing is clear: regulation cannot force adoption.

Stablecoin adoption is driven by the need for faster, cheaper remittances and by currency volatility. Dollar-pegged stablecoin activity in Nigeria saw a surge in recent years, driven by naira volatility, the same currency cNGN ties its value to.

For many users, a stablecoin tied to a volatile currency defeats the purpose of stablecoin use.

Beyond that, Seun Langele points out in a tweet that the adoption problem for cNGN is also a trust problem. Cryptocurrency is already met with skepticism by many; Langele points out that “a lot of people have told me that they don’t ‘trust’ cNGN.”

All of these factors, combined with the aforementioned barriers to entry, have restricted the adoption of cNGN by users and fintechs.

In Harri Obi’s words,

The problems of CNGN are multifaceted. I can write an entire book about it. I was only speaking [on] the fintech part, and every top founder I’ve spoken to about this has basically said cNGN is simply a solution looking for a problem.

The Need for Indispensable Infrastructure

For cNGN to expand, it needs clear economic incentives, developer engagement, enterprise integrations, merchant acceptance, and user demand.

Across Africa, the next phase of stablecoin growth will be won by those who become indispensable. Indispensable to developers, businesses, and payment providers looking for something better than what already exists.

cNGN is not there yet; it needs to prove its economic value.

Originally published at https://cryptoafrica.news on June 29, 2026.

Why Nigerian Fintechs Are Still Hesitant to Integrate cNGN Stablecoin was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.