I've been attending quite a few blockchain and tech events lately, and there's something I keep noticing.

Payment companies. Everywhere.

Cross-border payments, stablecoin payments, on-ramps, off-ramps, remittances. Different companies, different pitches, but a lot of them seem to be working on some version of the same problem.

And I kept wondering: do we really need this many payment companies?

Maybe it's because I live in Kenya, but payments have never felt like a particularly big problem to me.

If I want to send someone money, pay for something, or receive money, I use mobile money. It's fast, familiar, and for most of my life, it's just worked.

The first time I really encountered a payments problem was when I started working remotely and getting paid in crypto.

Suddenly, I had money, but I couldn't spend it directly on most of the things I needed. I had to figure out how to turn it into Kenyan shillings.

That introduced me to P2P markets, exchanges, and eventually the different off-ramping services being built across Africa.

But even then, I was experiencing only one part of the problem.

Meanwhile, every event I attended seemed to have more payment startups, more conversations about stablecoins, and more investors interested in the space.

Even blockchain ecosystems supporting African builders seemed particularly interested in payment use cases.

As someone building in a different part of the blockchain industry, I started questioning a few things.

Was I missing something obvious? Were payments really that big of an unsolved problem? Was I building in the wrong part of the market?

More importantly, what were these founders and investors seeing that I wasn't?

So I decided to spend some time understanding the market.

I looked at mobile money, foreign exchange, cross-border trade, stablecoins, the companies building payment infrastructure, and the regulations taking shape across Africa.

Here's what I found.

1. Kenya gave me a very narrow view of payments

One thing I hadn't properly appreciated was just how developed Kenya's domestic payment infrastructure already is.

According to the GSMA State of the Industry Report 2026, Sub-Saharan Africa processed approximately $1.4 trillion in mobile money transactions in 2025.

That's a massive amount of activity.

And if you've grown up in Kenya, where mobile money is already part of everyday life, it's easy to take that infrastructure for granted.

I don't spend much time thinking about how to move money within the country. I just do it.

Of course, that doesn't mean domestic payments are solved everywhere in Africa. Kenya isn't representative of every market, and moving money easily doesn't necessarily mean it's affordable for everyone.

But it does explain why I wasn't immediately convinced that we needed another consumer payment app.

If people already have a convenient way to send and receive money locally, what exactly is a new company improving?

What I hadn't considered was that these existing payment systems can also be important infrastructure for international payments.

Someone receiving money from another country might not care whether it travelled through a bank, a stablecoin, or some other network.

They just want it to arrive in their mobile money wallet or bank account.

And that's where my understanding started changing.

2. The problem isn't always moving money. Sometimes it's accessing the currency you need.

This was probably my biggest realization.

Being able to move money easily within your country doesn't mean you can easily move it outside the country.

And it definitely doesn't mean you can always access the currency you need.

Think about a business importing goods from China.

The business might have enough money in its local bank account, but the supplier wants to be paid in dollars.

Now there's a different problem.

The business needs to obtain those dollars, exchange its local currency at an acceptable rate, and get the payment to the supplier.

Depending on the country, any one of those steps can become difficult.

There are two problems here that I think are worth separating.

The first is currency volatility. You can access foreign currency, but its price might move significantly before you complete a transaction.

The second is currency scarcity or restrictions. You have enough local money, but you can't easily obtain the foreign currency you need, or there are restrictions on moving it out of the country.

The second problem really stood out to me when I came across data from the International Air Transport Association.

At the end of March 2026, airlines had approximately $258 million in blocked revenues in Algeria and $73 million in Angola, according to IATA.

Think about what that means.

These airlines had already earned the money. The problem was getting it out.

A better payment app doesn't solve that.

This is where I began to understand both the appeal and the limitations of stablecoins.

A stablecoin can provide an alternative way to transfer value, potentially without relying on the same correspondent banking arrangements.

But it doesn't magically create dollars where there aren't any.

Someone still needs to accept the local currency, provide the foreign currency, manage the liquidity, and operate within the relevant regulations.

The transfer itself is only one part of the payment.

3. Then I looked at how much money we're actually talking about

I wanted to understand the scale of these problems before looking too closely at the startups.

A few numbers stood out.

  • $1.4 trillion: Mobile money transaction value in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, according to GSMA.
  • $213.8 billion: Estimated intra-African trade in 2025, according to reporting on Afreximbank's African Trade Report 2026.
  • $56 billion: The World Bank's estimate of remittance inflows to Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024.

These figures measure different things, so they shouldn't be added together. But they help show how many different kinds of financial flows exist across the continent.

There's domestic commerce, regional trade, international supplier payments, remittances, and businesses constantly moving funds between markets.

Sources: GSMA, Afreximbank trade data, World Bank.

Then there's the cost.

According to the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide report, sending $200 to Sub-Saharan Africa cost an average of 8.46% in Q3 2025, compared with a global average of 6.36%.

That's a benchmark for relatively small remittances, not the price of every business transfer or payment corridor.

Still, it's expensive.

And when you consider how frequently families and businesses move money, even relatively small improvements in cost or reliability can matter.

I started seeing why investors might find the space attractive.

This wasn't just about someone like me converting a remote salary into shillings.

There were entire businesses depending on the movement of money between markets, with plenty of friction along the way.

4. What the stablecoin data actually tells us

I was also interested in how much of this activity was making its way on-chain.

The latest Chainalysis report on Sub-Saharan Africa estimated that the region's crypto economy reached approximately $101 billion between July 2025 and June 2026, representing 13.4% year-on-year growth.

South Africa accounted for approximately $39.3 billion, followed closely by Nigeria at $38.1 billion.

Ghana recorded $5.1 billion, while Ethiopia recorded $3.7 billion.

The important thing to remember is that these figures represent broader crypto activity, not just payments. Trading and other crypto transactions are included, and Chainalysis changed its methodology in 2026.

What interested me more was the activity related to actually moving money.

Chainalysis reported that stablecoin remittance value more than doubled to $492 million, while measured intra-regional crypto business-related payments grew from $34.3 million to $116.5 million.

The number of active intra-regional corridors in its analysis also increased from 80 to 152.

These figures don't represent the entire African payments market, but they show growing activity in specific cross-border use cases.

And that brought me back to something I'd experienced myself.

Sending a stablecoin from one wallet to another might be cheap and quick.

Getting money into that wallet, and converting it into usable currency on the other end, is a different problem.

In fact, one of the more surprising numbers I found came from Borderless's Q2 2026 stablecoin FX benchmark.

Across its observed African payment network, the median FX spread was approximately 5.13%.

That isn't what every African customer pays. Pricing varies substantially by corridor, provider, and transaction size.

But it illustrates something I think is important.

A stablecoin transfer can cost very little, while the conversion surrounding it remains expensive.

That's where a lot of the actual payments business happens.

5. What role do African local-currency stablecoins play?

Most conversations about stablecoins revolve around dollar-backed tokens like USDT and USDC.

And that makes sense. A lot of the demand comes from people and businesses wanting access to dollars.

But I also started looking at local-currency stablecoins.

Nigeria has cNGN, while South Africa has rand-linked tokens such as ZARU and ZARsc.

cNGN is particularly interesting.

It's a naira-backed stablecoin issued by WrappedCBDC Limited, with Convexity Technologies among the consortium's technology partners.

It operates across multiple blockchain networks, and Celo is one of the networks it expanded to, not the company behind its creation.

According to cNGN's official website, approximately ₦3.9 billion was in circulation as of 4 November 2026.

That's still relatively small compared with the broader crypto market.

But what interested me wasn't necessarily its current size.

It was the role a local-currency stablecoin could play in payment infrastructure.

A naira-backed stablecoin doesn't give someone dollar exposure. It represents naira.

But it could potentially provide an on-chain settlement leg between a foreign-currency stablecoin and the local financial system.

Imagine a payment moving through a route like this:

Local currency → Dollar stablecoin → Local-currency stablecoin → Bank account or mobile wallet

Not every payment needs all these steps, and the route only makes sense if it offers a real improvement over the alternatives.

You still need liquidity, reliable redemption, and competitive conversion rates.

Otherwise, you've just introduced another token into an already complicated process.

And that's something I kept coming back to throughout this research.

Putting a payment on-chain doesn't automatically make the entire payment cheaper.

6. Why so many companies can exist in the same payments market

Once I stopped thinking of payments as one big category, the number of startups started making more sense.

Consider a few different customers.

An importer wants to access foreign currency and pay a supplier overseas.

A global fintech wants to pay customers into local bank accounts and mobile wallets across several African markets.

A remittance company needs reliable access to local liquidity so it can fund payouts.

A business treasury team wants to move money between countries without keeping too much capital idle in different accounts.

And a remote worker like me just wants to convert crypto income into money I can spend.

These customers might use some of the same payment infrastructure, but they're not buying the same product.

Some companies provide liquidity. Others handle conversion, local payouts, settlement, compliance, banking integrations, or treasury management.

Some build consumer applications. Others build the infrastructure those applications depend on.

That's when I started looking at funding announcements differently.

In August 2026, Yellow Card announced $40 million in strategic funding to expand its business dollar accounts and stablecoin infrastructure.

Checker raised $8 million to build infrastructure connecting institutions with liquidity and payment networks, with plans to introduce settlement financing.

That last part caught my attention.

A payment company operating across multiple countries may need to keep funds available in each market to ensure it can pay customers promptly.

That ties up capital.

If another company can help reduce the amount of pre-funded liquidity required while maintaining reliable payouts, that's a real financial problem being solved.

And suddenly I could see why so many companies were focused on what happens before and after the transfer.

The opportunity isn't necessarily in building another way to send money.

It can be in making the infrastructure connecting currencies, institutions, and markets work better.

7. Why investors and blockchain ecosystems are paying attention

This was one of the questions that originally pushed me into the research.

I've spent a lot of time building blockchain infrastructure outside payments, so it's been interesting watching how much attention payment startups receive.

At times, it almost feels like building a payments company is one of the easier ways to get investors interested in blockchain in Africa.

I wanted to understand why.

Looking at it from an investor's perspective, I can see the attraction.

Payments are recurring.

Businesses and individuals need to move money regularly, not just once.

If you build infrastructure that companies depend on, you can potentially earn revenue each time money moves through it.

The value proposition is also relatively straightforward.

You're helping someone move money faster, more reliably, or at a lower cost.

Of course, high transaction volumes don't automatically mean a profitable business. Liquidity costs, compliance, banking relationships, FX spreads, and capital requirements can consume a significant portion of the revenue.

But I understand the investment thesis better now.

For blockchain ecosystems, I think there's another incentive.

Payments can generate consistent network activity.

A payment product processing transactions every day brings recurring usage to a blockchain.

When I look at ecosystems such as BNB Chain and Avalanche and their interest in payment infrastructure, that's one way I think about the incentives involved.

It's my interpretation, not necessarily the motivation behind every grant or investment.

There's still an important distinction, though.

A product generating lots of blockchain transactions isn't necessarily building a sustainable business.

Would customers continue using it without grants, incentives, or subsidised transaction costs?

That's the question I'd want answered.

Because ultimately, the person making the payment probably doesn't care which blockchain it's running on.

They care whether the money arrives, what it costs, and whether the service works when they need it.

8. Regulation is becoming a bigger part of the business

Another thing that stood out was how quickly regulation is changing.

We spend a lot of time talking about better rails, cheaper transactions, and faster settlement.

But if you're moving money between countries, access to regulated financial infrastructure matters just as much.

And African countries are starting to define the rules much more clearly.

Ghana established a licensing and supervisory framework under its Virtual Asset Service Providers Act 2025.

South Africa already has a crypto asset service provider licensing regime.

But what's happening in Kenya and Nigeria is particularly interesting to me.

Kenya has moved beyond drafting regulations

Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 came into force on 4 November 2025.

The final Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, 2026, published under Legal Notice No. 134, came into force on 22 July 2026.

And on 4 November 2026, the one-year statutory transition period for existing virtual asset service providers ended.

In other words, Kenya is no longer just proposing a regulatory framework. The rules are in force, and businesses within their scope face formal compliance and licensing obligations.

What I find interesting is how regulatory responsibility has been divided.

The Central Bank of Kenya oversees payment-related activities, including stablecoin issuance, virtual asset wallet providers, and virtual asset payment processors.

The Capital Markets Authority oversees activities such as virtual asset exchanges, brokers, investment advisers, and tokenization providers.

That distinction matters.

It shows that Kenya is beginning to regulate virtual asset businesses according to the financial activities they perform, rather than treating every crypto business as the same thing.

The capital requirements are also significant.

For example, the final regulations set minimum paid-up capital of KES 300 million for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers.

Compare that with how relatively cheaply someone can deploy a stablecoin smart contract.

The technology itself might be straightforward.

But operating a regulated stablecoin business involves reserve management, compliance, governance, banking relationships, and enough capital to meet regulatory requirements.

That changes who can realistically enter the market.

Source: Capital Markets Authority — VASP Regulations 2026.

Nigeria is taking an interesting approach

Nigeria's latest framework caught my attention for a slightly different reason.

On 5 November 2026, the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced regulations establishing specific requirements for stablecoin issuers and other non-security virtual asset services.

The minimum paid-up capital is ₦10 billion for naira-referenced stablecoin issuers and ₦15 billion for foreign-currency-referenced stablecoin issuers.

Foreign-currency stablecoins offered in Nigeria must also meet local incorporation, licensing, and token approval requirements.

Given the size of Nigeria's crypto market, these are significant developments.

The difference between the capital requirements for naira-backed and foreign-currency-backed stablecoins is especially interesting.

Could this encourage more local-currency stablecoin infrastructure?

Possibly.

But higher entry requirements could also reduce competition, concentrate the market among well-capitalised institutions, and increase costs.

And none of this means the underlying demand for dollars disappears.

Source: Central Bank of Nigeria — Regulations for the Operations of Non-Security Virtual Assets, November 2026.

What I'm taking away from both countries is that building the payment rail is only part of the business.

The ability to manage reserves, maintain liquidity, establish banking relationships, and operate under the right licences could determine which companies actually succeed.

I wouldn't be surprised to see more technology startups focusing on providing infrastructure to regulated institutions rather than trying to own the entire payment process.

9. My verdict: payments needs investment, and so do other industries

This research helped me understand what I was missing. My experience of everyday payments in Kenya doesn’t capture the difficulties people and businesses face when accessing foreign currency, sending remittances or settling trade across borders.

Those are real problems. Where founders can build useful, commercially viable solutions, they deserve support.

But understanding the payments opportunity also helps define its boundaries. In markets where domestic payments already work well, we should be specific about what remains unsolved. Cross-border settlement, currency conversion and liquidity are substantial challenges, but they represent one part of the continent’s needs.

As innovators, we should also be thinking beyond payments. What other industries could benefit from the technology we’re building? Where are businesses struggling, infrastructure missing or opportunities going unexplored?

I think investors have a responsibility here too. Payments may offer a familiar investment case, but other industries need capital and time to develop. I’d like to see more diversified investment and more willingness to evaluate emerging businesses on their own merits.

The same applies to tech events and blockchain ecosystems. Funding, technical support, exhibition space and access to relevant networks can help determine which ideas get the chance to grow. Builders working outside payments need meaningful access to those resources too.

That doesn’t mean every industry needs an identical allocation. It means ensuring that promising ideas across different industries receive serious consideration, even when their path to commercial adoption looks different.

I understand the focus on payments better now. I still believe we need to spread our attention and resources more broadly. Africa has many industries to build, and we should make room for the people working on them.