Nigerian startup Daya has closed a $2.4 million pre-seed round to develop stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure for African businesses navigating the continent’s costly and fragmented cross-border payments landscape.
The round was led by Hivemind Capital, with participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and Aptos Foundation. The raise comes as enterprises across Africa increasingly turn to stablecoins to bypass the delays and high fees of traditional banking channels.
The Problem Daya Is Solving
Cross-border payments remain one of the most persistent pain points for African businesses. Traditional wire transfers can take days and incur fees of five percent to ten percent, while forex liquidity in many markets remains thin. For companies importing goods from China, paying suppliers in India, or moving money across African markets, the friction is significant and expensive.
Daya’s platform is designed to make cross-border business transactions faster and significantly cheaper than traditional banking rails, with the company charging between 0.1% and 0.3% per transaction.
How the Platform Works
Daya gives businesses a U.S. dollar account through regulated banking partners. When customers or partners send dollars into that account, the funds are converted into dollar-backed stablecoins and credited to the business’s wallet. From there, businesses can hold the stablecoins or convert them to local currency directly into their bank accounts.
Rather than relying on a single foreign exchange provider, Daya aggregates multiple AML-compliant OTC liquidity providers, building what it describes as a financial operating system that integrates stablecoin rails directly into business workflows for treasury management, supplier payments, and payroll.
The Founders
Daya was founded by Aleph Lasebikan, a former chief product officer at Helicarrier and Y Combinator alumnus, alongside Paul Joe, who previously held roles at Circle, Microsoft, and Helicarrier. The company was founded in October 2025 and was the only African startup, out of 14, to graduate from the ALL15 cohort run by Alliance, one of crypto’s leading accelerator and founder networks.
Expansion Plans
Daya plans to use the fresh capital to expand its engineering team, secure key regulatory licenses, and pilot with early enterprise customers in high-volume corridors such as Nigeria–China, Kenya–India, and intra-African trade routes.
The startup has already moved to establish international partnerships. Daya recently announced a regulated B2B stablecoin corridor pilot between MENA and Africa with HashKey MENA, settled natively on Aptos, positioning Daya as the local payment infrastructure partner and providing compliant on- and off-ramp connectivity through its smart routing engine.
A Crowded But Growing Market
Daya enters a market with growing momentum. Analysts identified $390 billion in genuine stablecoin payment activity in 2025, more than double 2024 levels, with B2B transactions alone surging 733% year-over-year and now accounting for roughly 60% of all stablecoin payment volume.
Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are leading in stablecoin volumes across major platforms, with businesses increasingly using USDT and USDC for imports from China and Europe, as well as for diaspora remittances that exceed $50 billion annually to the continent.
Daya is not alone in targeting this space. Kenyan startup HoneyCoin recently raised $4.9 million for similar stablecoin-powered rails, while global players like Trace Finance and Fasset are also building in adjacent corridors. What differentiates Daya for now is its focus on African enterprise workflows and its regulated infrastructure play anchored by the Alliance accelerator network and institutional crypto backers.
With its pre-seed secured and early partnerships in place, the company’s near-term test will be converting pilot activity into sustainable transaction volume across the corridors it has identified.
