African banks, stablecoins, and the next payments inflection

By Gillian DARKO

We stand on the precipice of a new dawn in Africa. In May, Accra is set to host the 3i Africa Summit, a platform publicly positioned around innovation, investment, and impact, and framed by government and central-bank voices as a serious response to how value is “created, transferred, and regulated” in Africa’s rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.

Africa’s fragmented payment structures are not a novel issue. It is just becoming harder to ignore. Sending money across borders remains expensive, slow, and unpredictable, often significantly exceeding global average costs. The global average and settlement speed targets 35% of cross-border payments to settle within an hour globally. This is the backdrop against which stablecoins are gaining traction as a new settlement infrastructure rather than a speculative asset.

The strategic question before us is no longer whether stablecoins will touch African finance. The relevant question is whether African banks will institutionalise and govern that role, embedding stablecoin rails inside the regulated perimeter—or whether the next settlement infrastructure in Africa will continue to scale primarily outside bank balance sheets, outside formal liquidity governance, and outside supervisory line-of-sight. These are crucial questions as the digital assets continue to be shaped. The addressable market for cross-border payment value currently stands at $194.6 trillion in 2024, forecast to reach $320.2 trillion by 2032.

Will African banks step forward to institutionalise stablecoins within regulated systems? Or will they allow a parallel financial infrastructure to scale faster, cheaper, and increasingly dominant, outside their balance sheets and beyond their control?

This is not a minor change. The global market for cross-border payments is expected to grow from $194.6 trillion in 2024 to $320.2 trillion by 2032. The question is not if Africa will join, but on what terms.

The cost of standing still

The inefficiencies in Africa’s cross-border payments system are well documented, but they are often understated in their cumulative impact.

According to the World Bank, the global average cost of sending $200 stood at 6.49% in Q1 2025. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most expensive receiving region at 8.78%, with banks charging an average of 14.55%, the highest among all provider categories.

The cumulative impact of these systemic inefficiencies becomes even clearer when examining their effect on various economic participants. For households, these high costs directly diminish disposable income, while for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), they lead to tighter profit margins. Large corporations also face significant challenges, as these frictions result in pricing distortions, heightened supplier risk, and inefficiencies in working capital management.

Speed and predictability remain equally constrained. The Bank for International Settlements reports that, as of 2025, only 35% of global cross-border retail payments are credited within one hour, well below the 75% target set under the G20 roadmap.

Critically, progress toward these targets has been uneven and modest. Even within advanced markets, improvements in end-user outcomes remain limited.

For Africa, operating across fragmented correspondent banking networks, multiple currency regimes, and uneven access to liquidity, the assumption that legacy rails will self-correct is no longer credible.

The world has already decided

While African markets continue to debate positioning, global financial systems have already moved into execution.

Stablecoins are being reclassified—from loosely regulated crypto instruments to tightly governed settlement infrastructure embedded within banking systems.

In April 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority operationalised a licensing regime for fiat-referenced stablecoins. Institutions, including HSBC and a Standard Chartered-backed joint venture, have received licences, with issuance expected to support both domestic and cross-border use cases. These instruments are designed to be fully backed by high-quality liquid assets, held in segregated accounts, and governed by strict financial crime compliance frameworks.

Europe is converging toward a similar model. A consortium including BNP Paribas and ING is advancing a euro-backed stablecoin structure aimed not at experimentation, but at establishing a shared, compliant market standard capable of competing with dominant global payment rails.

In the United States, institutional intent is no longer ambiguous. Senior executives across Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase have publicly confirmed that stablecoins are being actively evaluated for issuance and integration into digital payment flows.

Switzerland provides a further signal of maturity. Banks, including UBS and other regulated institutions, are already testing Swiss franc stablecoin use cases within controlled sandbox environments, moving beyond theory into applied infrastructure design.

The pattern is consistent across jurisdictions: stablecoins are not being resisted. They are being absorbed, standardised, and aligned with regulatory frameworks.

Africa is not experimenting, it is adapting

The shift occurring in Africa is distinct; rather than being propelled by innovation, it is a transformation necessitated by existing systemic limitations.

According to Chainalysis, Sub-Saharan Africa received over $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, representing 52% year-on-year growth. Stablecoins account for a significant share of this activity, particularly in higher-value transactions linked to real-world commercial flows.

The adoption of stablecoins serves as a direct manifestation of structural demand within the market.

High remittance costs, FX volatility, limited access to correspondent banking, and settlement delays are not temporary inefficiencies—they are persistent constraints. Stablecoins are being adopted because they directly address these constraints by offering faster settlement, greater predictability, and reduced intermediation.

Rather than establishing entirely new patterns of use, stablecoins are simply giving a formal structure to financial activities that are already happening in this environment.

Regulation is not the barrier

The idea that regulation will slow this transition is increasingly outdated. Across Africa, regulators are moving to define, not deny, the market.

In Ghana, the Bank of Ghana is advancing a legal and supervisory framework under the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, while maintaining a clear monetary stance: the cedi remains the sole legal tender, and virtual assets cannot be used for pricing or wages.

But the more consequential development is operational. Both the Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Ghana have announced participants in their respective regulatory sandboxes. This marks a shift from policy signalling to active market testing, where stablecoin-related use cases are being evaluated under direct supervisory oversight.

Kenya is taking a complementary approach, embedding prudential discipline into its framework. Draft regulations require full reserve backing, restrict eligible assets to high-quality instruments, and mandate custody arrangements approved by the Central Bank of Kenya, including provisions to anchor a portion of stablecoin liquidity within domestic banking systems.

South Africa illustrates regulatory scale. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority has processed hundreds of crypto asset service provider licence applications, signalling that compliance infrastructure is expanding rapidly.

At the global level, the Financial Action Task Force and International Organization of Securities Commissions have established a clear compliance baseline, including risk-based supervision, transparency requirements, and interoperability considerations.

The regulatory direction is not ambiguous. Stablecoins will exist, but within defined, enforceable boundaries.

The opportunity banks are underestimating

The most common framing of stablecoins, as faster payments, is fundamentally incomplete.

The deeper opportunity is coordination: synchronising value movement across jurisdictions, time zones, currencies, and compliance regimes with greater efficiency and transparency.

For banks, this translates into tangible advantages. Treasury operations can be optimised through real-time liquidity visibility. Pre-funding requirements in correspondent networks can be reduced. Settlement can become more predictable, and reconciliation more automated.

These are not speculative benefits. They are core banking efficiencies—liquidity management, operational control, and balance sheet optimisation, re-expressed through new infrastructure.

This becomes strategically significant in the context of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, developed by Afreximbank to facilitate intra-African trade.

If Africa is building regional payment rails, then tokenised settlement instruments, including regulated stablecoins, become natural extensions to improve liquidity efficiency, reduce third-currency dependency, and compress settlement timelines.

Early signals are already emerging. Absa Bank has partnered with Ripple to develop digital asset custody capabilities, while Nedbank is exploring blockchain-based payment and settlement solutions with Crypto.com.

However, these remain early-stage initiatives. The broader opportunity, system-level coordination, remains largely underexploited.

Ghana’s moment, and a narrow window

Ghana occupies a distinctive position in this transition.

It combines regulatory clarity, institutional credibility, and regional influence. It ranks first in the GSMA Mobile Money Regulatory Index, with a score of 96.10%, reflecting a strong track record in governing high-volume digital financial systems.

More importantly, it has established a clear policy balance: enabling innovation while preserving monetary sovereignty.

This creates a viable model for stablecoin integration—not as a currency substitute, but as a regulated settlement layer embedded within the financial system.

The convergence of regulatory frameworks, sandbox testing, and continental convening power—anchored by the 3i Africa Summit—places Ghana in a position to shape, rather than import, the structure of stablecoin adoption in Africa.

Conclusion: Action cannot be deferred

The evolution of the African payments landscape is no longer a question of technical feasibility, but of institutional resolve.

Financial institutions are at a crossroads: they must decide to lead by incorporating stablecoins into regulated frameworks—ensuring audited reserves, dependable redemption, and seamless interoperability—or risk being sidelined.

To remain passive is to concede the future of continental value transfer to external networks.

Africa has a history of rising to such challenges, and this inflection point is no different.

In an environment where the window for action is rapidly closing, hesitation is not a strategy; it is a surrender of sovereignty.

The writer is the Group VP of Strategy, Yellow Card

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