Nigeria is slowly becoming the center of Africa’s stablecoin economy, accounting for roughly 60% of the continent’s stablecoin companies, according to data tracked by Verda Venture’s Stablescape.
Nigeria has experienced high inflation, extreme naira volatility, and periods of limited access to foreign exchange, creating demand for dollar-denominated assets that can be accessed and moved digitally.
“Nigeria has had significant bouts of inflation, relatively unstable monetary regime. And so it checks the box for having both a large market and a large need for stablecoin infrastructure,” said Alex Witt, CFA at Verda Ventures.
Data from the IMF shows that the country received about $59 billion in crypto inflows between July 2023 and June 2024, with stablecoins accounting for more than 65% of the country’s digital asset transactions in 2024. Furthermore, it accounted for roughly 60% of stablecoin inflows into Sub-Saharan Africa from 2019 to 2025.
Nigeria is Turning Stablecoin Demand Into Infrastructure
But the bigger story is what has formed around that demand, with the nation’s companies actively building wallets, exchanges, FX services, treasury products, and on- and off-ramps that connect stablecoins to local financial systems.
This is happening because Nigeria’s large user base has created an incentive to build a connection to the real economy.
Take a business that wants to use a stablecoin for settlement, but its customers, suppliers, and employees still operate in local currencies and through banks or mobile-money networks.
There’s also a strong commercial incentive to expand into other markets. Once a company has developed the technology, liquidity relationships, and compliance systems needed to connect stablecoins with the naira, it can adapt that infrastructure to other African currencies and markets without starting from scratch.
Quidax, a Nigerian digital-asset company, shows how this expansion works. The firm has extended its stablecoin infrastructure to more than 21 countries and 14 currencies, including markets such as Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and international ones.
Witt also expects this growth to continue, saying,”We do think that the market will become more dispersed over time, and we’ll see more pan-African businesses emerge.”
Nigeria’s lead is therefore not only about how many stablecoins are used domestically, but also about whether the companies building around that demand can provide infrastructure across multiple markets.
Europe Is Already Forming Part of These Rails
Nigeria’s stablecoin infrastructure is starting to reach beyond Africa. Cross-border payments platform YouSend, which uses stablecoin settlement, launched in the UK and Canada in June 2026 after handling more than $1 million across 10,000 transactions during its private beta.
The company is regulated by the FCA as a Small Payment Institution in the UK and holds an International Money Transfer Operator licence from Nigeria’s central bank.
The IMF says Nigerian households and small businesses already use stablecoins for remittances and cross-border transfers, while businesses use them to pay overseas suppliers.
Trade offers another example, with European Commission data showing that EU imports from Nigeria reached approximately $20.85 billion in 2025. Nigeria also exports cocoa, rubber and other agricultural products to Europe, while European firms export machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs to Nigeria.
For exporters and importers, stablecoin settlement can reduce some of the friction involved in moving money between currencies and banking systems. A cocoa exporter, for example, can receive payment from a European buyer while continuing to pay farmers, processors and logistics providers locally.
A European buyer paying a Nigerian exporter could move euros into USDC, settle the payment on the blockchain and have the funds converted into naira. A Nigerian importer could follow the reverse route, converting naira into USDC before settlement and then into euros for the oversees supplier.
As Nigerian providers expand, these existing payment and trade flows give them markets beyond Nigeria and strengthen the case for Nigerian-built infrastructure to become part of a larger African and international settlement network.
Regulation Will Determine the Scale
Regulation will determine how far Nigeria’s stablecoin infrastructure can expand across Africa and into international payment corridors. The technology can move value across borders in seconds, but the businesses connecting stablecoins to bank accounts, FX markets and local currencies still have to operate within national financial rules.
Nigeria has been bringing the sector further into its regulatory framework. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced licensing requirements for virtual asset service providers, while the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) oversees payment and financial-system activities relevant to cross-border transfers.
The framework deals with areas such as licensing, custody, consumer protection, market integrity and anti-money-laundering requirements.
Meanwhile, the EU has the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which sets out authorization, governance, reserves and consumer protection rules for crypto service and stablecoin providers operating in the bloc.
For a Nigeria-EU payment corridor, European providers handling stablecoin transactions would therefore need to meet EU requirements, while Nigerian providers would need to comply with Nigeria’s regulatory framework.
That creates a practical challenge for companies trying to build across both markets. A stablecoin transfer may be global, but the on- and off-ramps are local. Providers still need regulated access to banking systems, FX liquidity and payment networks in each jurisdiction, alongside KYC and AML controls.
The IMF has also talked about the need for stronger oversight of stablecoins in Nigeria as their use for cross-border payments grows. Regulation will therefore be important not only for protecting users and maintaining financial stability, but also for determining which companies can build the infrastructure at scale.
If Nigerian providers can establish compliant connections across more African currencies and international corridors, their domestic advantage could become a regional one. Nigeria could eventually account for a smaller share of Africa’s stablecoin companies while its infrastructure firms handle a growing share of the transactions moving through the continent’s stablecoin economy.
About The Author
