Onafriq expands regulated stablecoin settlement across Africa with USDC

Africa’s largest payments network is making a very deliberate bet that stablecoins can do what decades of traditional banking infrastructure have not: make it cheap and fast to move money across the continent. Onafriq, the pan-African payments operator connecting roughly 1 billion mobile money wallets and 500 million bank accounts across more than 40 markets, is scaling its use of USDC as a settlement rail for cross-border transactions. The move builds on a strategic partnership with Circle, the issuer of USDC, first announced in Dubai on April 30, 2025. The $5 billion problem To understand why this matters, you need to understand how broken intra-African payments currently are. Over 80% of cross-border transactions on the continent get routed through offshore correspondent banks. That means a payment from Lagos to Nairobi might travel through London or New York before reaching its destination. The result is roughly $5 billion in annual transaction fees, a staggering toll on commerce between African nations. Onafriq’s approach positions USDC as a parallel settlement rail running alongside traditional fiat systems. Partners plugged into the network don’t need to rip out their existi...