Nigeria Leads Global Survey on Crypto-Based International Transfers, New Index Finds
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.
The Thunes/Juniper Research Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index, released June 2, 2026, surveyed 6,763 consumers across 10 countries in April 2026 and evaluated 50 markets using World Bank data. It found that 40% of Nigerian respondents use crypto to send international transfers. The global figure sits at 11%. The result cements Nigeria's position as one of the clearest examples of crypto crossing over from speculative asset to everyday financial tool.
The distinction matters. The 40% figure measures crypto use specifically for cross-border transfers, not overall crypto ownership. Separate data from Chainalysis puts the share of Nigerians holding any crypto at roughly 10% of the population, or about 22 million people as of 2025.
The Thunes figure is narrower and more pointed: among those surveyed, four in ten are already routing international payments through crypto rails rather than banks or traditional wire services.
Cost and Speed Are Driving the Shift
The economic case is straightforward. Traditional remittance services charge an average of around 8.45% per transfer globally. Sending USDT (Tether's dollar-pegged stablecoin) over the Tron or Solana networks costs less than one dollar and settles in minutes. Nigeria is one of Africa's largest remittance-receiving nations, and those savings compound quickly across millions of transactions.
Stablecoin fluency in Nigeria reflects this utility. Only 19% of Nigerian respondents in the Thunes survey said they were unfamiliar with stablecoins, compared to 59% in Europe. Separately, Breet.io's 2026 Nigeria statistics report found that 59% of crypto-active Nigerian adults hold USDT specifically, and up to 95% prefer receiving payments in stablecoins rather than naira. Roughly 80% of Nigerian crypto transactions take place on peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, where users trade directly with one another rather than through centralised exchanges.
Naira volatility underpins much of this behaviour. The Central Bank of Nigeria's managed float of the naira in 2023 and 2024 accelerated a broader shift toward dollar-denominated stablecoins as both a payment instrument and an inflation hedge. Dollar scarcity at Nigerian commercial banks has reinforced this, making USDT a practical workaround for FX access. The rapid spread of adoption also reflects the demographic profile of Nigerian crypto users: 52% of Nigerian crypto investors are under 30, creating a mobile-native user base that has embraced app-based stablecoin platforms with few barriers to entry.
Nigeria Anchors a Broader Regional Surge
Nigeria's numbers do not exist in isolation. Chainalysis reported that Sub-Saharan Africa received $205 billion in on-chain crypto value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52% year-over-year increase, making the region the third-fastest growing crypto region globally.
Nigeria alone accounted for $92.1 billion of that total in on-chain value received, nearly three times the figure for second-place South Africa. The Chainalysis 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index ranked Nigeria sixth worldwide.
Activity in the region is predominantly retail-driven. Breet.io 2026 data shows that 85% of Nigerian crypto transactions fall below $1 million in value, consistent with a user base of individuals and small businesses rather than institutional traders.
Tron remains the dominant network for these flows because its low fees make it practical for sub-$1,000 transfers. DefiLlama's live stablecoin tracker confirms, as of publication, that Tron consistently carries the highest stablecoin supply of any blockchain.
The Thunes report frames the broader problem as a structural one, not just a Nigerian one. "Domestic payments have gone instant, yet too often the moment money hits a border, innovation grinds to a halt," said Mathieu Limousi, Chief Marketing Officer at Thunes. Nick Maynard, VP of Research at Juniper Research, put it more bluntly: "Cross-border friction is no longer a localised payment rails problem; it is a global interoperability crisis."
Regulation Is Catching Up
Nigeria's regulatory landscape has shifted substantially. The Investments and Securities Act (ISA) 2025, gazetted in May 2025, formally places digital assets under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission and creates licensing categories for virtual asset service providers (VASPs). A January 2026 SEC circular set the minimum paid-up capital for licensed digital asset exchanges at two billion naira, roughly $1.3 million at current rates. A 10% capital gains tax on crypto disposals also took effect in 2025 under the Nigeria Tax Administration Act (NTAA).
For early-stage companies, the SEC's Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Program (ARIP) provides a supervised operating window while full licensing is pending. Exchanges including Busha and Quidax are operating under this framework. "This represents industry maturation rather than restriction, enabling legitimacy for projects willing to comply," said Omosefe Egharevba, an independent Web3 growth strategist, in a May 2026 analysis published by BitcoinKE.
Neither the Central Bank of Nigeria nor the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement specifically addressing the Thunes report findings at the time of publication.
What Comes Next
The analysis that follows represents this publication's editorial assessment of the source material and does not represent a finding of any single report.
The convergence of high retail adoption, a maturing regulatory framework, and an acute remittance cost problem suggests Nigeria occupies a structurally different position from most crypto markets. The most immediate commercial opportunity appears to sit at the fiat on-ramp and off-ramp layer, where stablecoin-native payment rails with local naira liquidity could capture volume currently split across informal P2P networks.
That structural difference becomes clearer when Nigeria is set alongside a market such as India, where crypto activity has historically been more speculative and exchange-driven. Nigeria's adoption is utility-driven and P2P-native, rooted in remittance need and currency instability rather than investment appetite. The distinction matters for how infrastructure providers and regulators approach the next phase of growth in either market.
With an estimated 27 to 30 million Nigerians projected to hold crypto by end of 2026, according to Breet.io, the infrastructure question is no longer whether adoption exists. It is whether the rails can keep pace with it.
The most recent Chainalysis on-chain data cited in this article covers July 2024 through June 2025. Updated figures for the 2025 to 2026 cycle have not yet been published.