Africa has showcased that digital money can achieve scale, yet the continent remains in an experimental phase compared with more mature Western markets. Raj Kamal, co-founder and chief executive of TransFi, a stablecoin payments firm, in an interview with Business A.M.’s Onome Amuge, discusses whether stablecoins are approaching viability as real payment infrastructure across Africa; particularly as they integrate with mobile money platforms, domestic banking rails and cross-border settlement systems.
Raj also addresses the operational realities shaping adoption, including liquidity constraints, last-mile payouts, regulatory alignment, trust, foreign exchange management and what the company’s experience across global corridors reveals about tackling fragmentation in African payments. Excerpts:
Africa’s mobile money ecosystem processed over $1.4 trillion in 2025. What fundamentally changes if stablecoins successfully plug into that infrastructure?
Africa has already proven that people will use digital money at scale, and when stablecoins plug into that infrastructure, people will still want familiar wallets and trusted local cash-in and cash-out points. With stablecoins, people can make cross-border value transfer faster and more conveniently, without being dependent on multiple intermediaries. For SMEs, through stablecoins, there will be no working capital trapped in transit, fewer surprises on settlement timing, and a cleaner bridge between local wallets and global commerce. In my view, the winning model, instead of replacing mobile money, will strengthen the rails that enable cross border transfers – intra-Africa or with other parts of the world.
We’re seeing momentum from players like Circle and regional rails such as PAPSS. Are we at an inflection point where stablecoins move from experimentation to real payment infrastructure in Africa?
We’re getting close to that point – but, what makes this moment different is that you now have both demand and infrastructure moving in the same direction. PAPSS has expanded to 17 countries, with more than 150 commercial banks and 14 switches, indicating that regional payment connectivity is becoming more real. At the same time, Circle’s March 2026 collaboration with Sasai shows that major stablecoin players are treating Africa as a serious payments market, not just a testing ground. The conversation is shifting from “can this work?” to “how do we make this operational at scale?” – indicating maturity.
From an operator’s standpoint, what are the hardest technical and operational challenges in connecting stablecoin liquidity to mobile money platforms and local bank rails?
From an operator’s standpoint, the challenge is not moving stablecoins on-chain; that part is relatively easy; the challenging part is making money usable for the people for everyday transactions.
In emerging markets, the off-ramp remains complex; if a business in Lagos or Nairobi receives value instantly on-chain but cannot reliably convert it into local fiat, then the payment has not really solved the problem. So the technical challenge is orchestration, but the operational challenge is trust in execution.
How do you bridge the gap between blockchain-based settlement and last-mile delivery systems like mobile wallets, agent networks, and local bank payouts?
People often think the challenging part is the blockchain side, but in reality the real test is much simpler: can the person on the other end receive the money quickly, in local currency, and through a cash-out channel they already trust? That is why I do not see blockchain settlement and last-mile delivery as two separate layers; they are part of the same payment journey, because value may move instantly in the background, but it still has to pass through local payout rails and local compliance requirements before it becomes useful in the real world.
What needs to happen for stablecoin payments to become as seamless and trusted as mobile money for everyday users and SMEs?
For stablecoin payments to feel as seamless as mobile money, the experience has to feel familiar from the start, the money has to arrive when expected, and the whole process has to inspire confidence rather than questions. Once it starts behaving like a reliable payment infrastructure instead of a separate crypto experience, adoption becomes a lot more natural for individuals and SMEs.
With markets like Kenya moving toward clearer stablecoin regulations, how critical is regulatory alignment to scaling these solutions across multiple African corridors?
Regulatory alignment is absolutely central because you cannot build a serious multi-country payment infrastructure if every market has a different view on how stablecoins should be treated or used in payment flows. Kenya is a good example, because its current draft VASP regulations go into concrete issues like reserve assets, redemption rights, and licensing, and that provides clarity for financial institutions and liquidity providers to know what rules they are building around. Without that, expansion across African corridors becomes slower, more expensive, and much more fragmented than it needs to be.
Trust remains a major factor. What will it take for regulators, banks, and users to view stablecoins as a reliable part of the financial system rather than a parallel one?
Trust happens when stablecoins are no longer felt as a separate financial instrument but start becoming a natural part of how money already moves. This happens when the experience becomes steady enough that institutions can engage with confidence, and users stop feeling as though they are taking a risk by using it. In the end, people are judging the system by checking whether the value holds up and the money is there when they need it. Once that confidence is built over time, stablecoins stop acting as an alternative system and are treated as a better payment infrastructure.”
Given Africa’s persistent FX volatility and liquidity fragmentation, what practical role can stablecoins play in optimising treasury operations and cross-border currency management?
In markets where currency pressure is constant, stablecoins can be genuinely useful from a treasury point of view because they give businesses a steadier way to move value across borders without delays around funding, and access to dollars. Describing stablecoins as a cure for FX volatility would not be right, because that would be overstating it, but they can absolutely make it easier for companies to manage cross-border flows with more speed and more control. In African markets, where liquidity can be uneven and timing can have a real impact on working capital, it can be really helpful.”
TransFi has scaled to over $1 billion in processed volume across 70+ countries. What lessons from your global corridors are most applicable to solving Africa’s payments fragmentation problem today?
The biggest lesson for us has been that payment fragmentation is usually a market reality problem, because every corridor has its own habits and its own points of friction. So the real answer is to build infrastructure that can adapt to local payment behaviour & fragmentation, while still making cross-border movement feel seamless, easy, more reliable, and far less expensive than it does today.
