Stablecoin volumes, a record infrastructure commitment, a private equity exit, and South Africa's Mr Price Group frame a busy week for African business and finance.
Read full article →Sub-Saharan Africa processed $205 billion in on-chain crypto transactions over the past year, institutional ETF flows have exceeded $56 billion globally, and four of the world's largest emerging markets (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Pakistan) now have operative crypto laws. The data from mid-2026 points less to a speculative boom and more to a foundational reset in how digital assets function in the real economy.
Dublin-based Esca Finance has integrated MANSA's stablecoin liquidity infrastructure, targeting real-time clearing across Nigeria, Ghana, and the CFA franc zones of Central and West Africa.
Four in ten Nigerians surveyed say they use cryptocurrency platforms to send money across borders, a rate more than three and a half times the global average, according to a new payments research index published this week.
PayPal has extended its US dollar-backed stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), to 26 African countries including Malawi and Uganda, as part of a broader rollout to approximately 70 markets worldwide. PayPal announced the global expansion on March 17, 2026, covering 68 additional markets; the Africa-specific activation launched on May 20, 2026. The expansion gives users in those markets the ability to buy, hold, send, and receive PYUSD within their PayPal accounts and convert funds to local currency when they withdraw.
Three South African firms have built regulated pathways to Bitcoin for institutional investors who cannot legally hold the asset directly, using listed equities and insurance wrappers to work around some of the continent's most binding institutional constraints.
Tanzanian fintech Nala has secured a credit facility of up to $50 million from private lender Liquidity, structured through Mars Growth Capital, a joint venture between Liquidity and Japan's MUFG Bank. The company will use the capital to pre-fund cross-border payment flows and serve larger enterprise clients through its B2B infrastructure platform, Rafiki.