Daya, the Nigerian stablecoin infrastructure startup that built its name on cross-border payments for African businesses, is moving into a new line of business. The company has launched Daya Stocks, a platform that lets users buy tokenised versions of US-listed shares and exchange-traded funds, marking its first major push beyond payments into investment products.
What the new product offers
Daya Stocks is currently live in testing and will give users access to more than 400 US-listed stocks and ETFs, including shares in companies like Nvidia and Tesla, as well as the S&P 500 ETF. Investors can start with as little as one dollar, and trading will run around the clock rather than being limited to standard market hours. Daya will charge a transaction fee of 0.25 percent on trades.
Paul Joe, Daya’s co-founder, framed the launch as a natural continuation of the company’s existing stablecoin business rather than a departure from it. He compared the potential impact of tokenised stocks on global equity access to what stablecoins have already done for access to the US dollar, arguing that the same blockchain infrastructure used to move money across borders can now be used to move wealth into global markets, with faster settlement and fractional ownership as added benefits.
A crowded but fast-growing category
Daya is not alone in this space. Tokenised stock products have been multiplying across crypto exchanges serving African and global retail users, as platforms look for new revenue streams built on top of stablecoin infrastructure they already operate. Global exchanges have rolled out similar offerings in recent months, layering tokenised equities on top of stablecoin-funded trading accounts and extending access to markets outside the United States.
Analysts see the category as one of the more significant growth areas in digital assets. Consulting firm McKinsey has estimated that the market for tokenised financial assets, excluding cryptocurrencies and stablecoins themselves, could reach 2 trillion dollars by 2030. Much of that value, however, is expected to flow to the infrastructure providers and platforms that build the rails rather than to any single retail-facing product, which helps explain why stablecoin-native companies like Daya are moving quickly to stake out a position in tokenised equities before the space consolidates.
What it means for African investors
For African retail investors, products like Daya Stocks lower the barrier to owning fractional shares of major US companies, sidestepping the higher minimums, slower settlement, and currency friction that often come with using traditional international brokerages. Round-the-clock trading also removes the constraint of US market hours, letting users trade tokenised shares outside the traditional 9:30 am to 4 pm Eastern Time window.
