Western Europe already accounts for some of the highest-value transactions on an African stablecoin business-payment platform, according to data from TechCabal.
Grey Business, the payments arm of African fintech Grey, says it processed $61.4 million in total payment volume during its first four months. The data also shows that Nigeria leads transaction count on the platform, while Western Europe and the Middle East lead transaction value.
USDC and USDT also account for the largest share of cross-border volume, making stablecoins its largest payment channel.
“We are four months in and already past $61 million in processed volume,” said Idorenyin Obong, CEO and co-founder of Grey. “African businesses have spent years working around infrastructure that wasn’t built for them.”
The executive added that African businesses are using stablecoins “not as a workaround but as their primary cross-border rail.” Data from Chainalysis also indicates that transactions involving these digital assets made up more than 43% of all crypto transaction volume in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024.
Europe and Africa Already Have A Trade Relationship
African companies already transact with European companies, with data from the Council of the European Union showing that goods exchanged between the two regions reached almost $384.15 billion in 2024. Europe imported $205.06 billion worth of products from the continent that year, while outbound shipments to African nations reached $178.76 billion.
EU-Africa trade has also grown by 27.1% over the past decade, showing just how many businesses need to move money between the two markets. But still, even with the growth, enterprises are still having issues moving money efficiently across currencies, banks, and settlement systems.
For example, an African exporter selling goods to a European buyer may need to get paid in euros but do business in naira, rand, cedi or other local currencies. The buyer needs to pay through a European banking system, while the supplier needs access to funds in their local currency.
Businesses also have to deal with settlement delays, prefunding, and liquidity across multiple currencies, which can tie up working capital, especially for smaller ones that do not have large treasury operations.
But stablecoins can simplify some of these steps by providing a dollar-denominated settlement asset between the two sides.
Stablecoins Are Connecting The Payment Rails
Fintechs like Grey are formalizing this infrastructure by allowing businesses to hold, convert, and settle these digital assets globally. A European buyer can pay in euros, which the firm converts into USDC or USDT and transfers on-chain before converting the funds into the recipient’s local currency, while the same process works in reverse when an African business pays a European supplier.
In this case, the stablecoin acts as a bridge between the two currencies and financial systems, which can be useful when direct currency liquidity is limited because USDC and USDT provide dollar-denominated liquidity that can move between markets before being converted into local currency.
For businesses, the digital asset can also stay in their treasury between transactions rather than being converted immediately, giving them another way to manage balances across payment corridors while reducing how often funds move through traditional banking and FX systems.
That lines up with what Grey is seeing in its own payment flows, with Obong saying businesses are using the digital assets for “treasury management, for supplier payments, for trade settlements,” suggesting the activity is being used more in everyday enterprise payments.
Regulation Will Influence The Corridor
Regulation could determine how easily money moves between Nigeria and Western Europe as stablecoin payments become more common in business transactions.
Nigeria is tightening its rules around digital assets, with the SEC proposing rules in August covering activities including the transfer and settlement of digital assets, meaning providers facilitating stablecoin payments for Nigerian businesses would need to meet requirements around licensing, custody and compliance.
The regulator is already bringing providers into this framework, admitting three additional virtual asset firms into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme in August and giving them conditional approval to operate under supervision. For companies connecting Nigerian businesses to international payment systems, this creates a more formal route into the market, but also makes compliance part of the cost of maintaining the corridor.
Europe is taking a similar approach under MiCA, which establishes common rules for crypto-asset service providers and requires them to meet EU authorization and conduct requirements. For Nigeria-Europe payments, that means the provider handling the European side needs the relevant authorization.
That directly affects Grey, whose operating terms state that the availability of payment methods, currencies, corridors and rails can vary based on jurisdiction, partner availability and regulatory requirements. Regulation therefore affects whether Grey can offer and expand certain payment routes, not just how those routes are monitored once they are in place.
This matters because Western Europe is already one of the highest-value destinations for payments on the firm’s platform. As the corridor grows, regulatory access becomes part of the infrastructure needed to support it, and if providers can meet the requirements in both markets, the Nigeria-Europe route could develop into a repeatable B2B settlement network rather than a series of individual cross-border transfers.
The same infrastructure could eventually help other African enterprises expand their European payments without having to build a new payment route for each market.
A Kenyan exporter, Ghanaian supplier or South African business could use the same stablecoin rails to receive payments from Europe, manage foreign-currency balances and pay suppliers at home, provided the banking, FX and regulatory links are in place in each market.
This, in turn, allows payment providers to connect multiple African markets to one European settlement network instead of building separate country corridors, making cross-border trade easier to scale as stablecoins become part of everyday business transactions.
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