Grey Business, the B2B arm of cross-border payments startup Grey, reached the milestone across four months of live operation. Nigeria generated the highest number of transactions on the platform, while Western Europe and the Middle East led on total transaction value, pointing to a clear pattern: African businesses billing and collecting from clients in Europe and the Gulf appear to be the platform's dominant user profile.

The primary use cases are treasury management, supplier payments, and trade settlements.

"African businesses have spent years working around infrastructure that wasn't built for them," said Idorenyin Obong, Grey's CEO, in a statement tied to the announcement.

Obong acknowledged that stablecoin adoption on the platform outpaced internal projections. "Stablecoins being our largest payment channel wasn't something we projected this early," he said.

Stablecoins are digital currencies pegged to a stable asset such as the US dollar and designed to maintain that value while moving across blockchain networks. USDC and USDT, both collateral-backed stablecoins of this type, together account for roughly 85 to 90 percent of African stablecoin transaction volume, according to multiple industry sources.

Joseph Femi Aghedo, Grey's COO and co-founder, framed the opportunity in terms of a market that traditional financial institutions had largely avoided. "Banks looked at this market and saw risk. We looked at it and saw businesses that were finding ways to operate globally despite the infrastructure," he said.

Nigeria at the Center

The transaction count data reflects broader trends documented by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. In the year to June 2025, Nigeria received $92.1 billion in on-chain value, nearly three times the volume recorded by South Africa, the next largest market in the region.

Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole processed $205 billion in on-chain transaction volume during that period, a 52 percent year-over-year increase, making it the third-fastest-growing crypto region globally behind Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

Stablecoins account for 43 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's total crypto volume, according to Chainalysis. A separate 2026 report by BVNK found that 79 percent of crypto-active users across Africa hold stablecoins, the highest rate of any region in the world.

In Nigeria specifically, that figure reaches 87 percent. The BVNK report also found that 92 percent of African stablecoin users cite conditions in their local economy as their primary motivation, pointing to naira volatility as a structural driver rather than speculative interest.

Company Background

Grey was founded in 2020 under the name Aboki Africa by Obong and Aghedo. It joined Y Combinator's Winter 2022 cohort and later raised a $2 million seed round from backers including Y Combinator, Soma Capital, and Ingressive Capital.

Grey now serves roughly 3 million users across 70 countries and supports transfers to more than 170 destinations worldwide. The company holds regulatory registrations with FinCEN in the United States and FINTRAC in Canada.

Grey Business launched on February 10, 2026 at the Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi, with Paystack and venture firm Antler participating in the event. At launch, the platform had more than 1,000 businesses registered in beta.

A Crowded Field Is Getting More Crowded

The B2B stablecoin payment space in Africa is becoming more competitive. Yellow Card exited its retail business entirely in January 2026 to focus on enterprise cross-border and treasury services, and announced a partnership with Mastercard in May 2026 targeting Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and the UAE. Visa has also moved into the space, expanding stablecoin settlement across Central, Eastern, Middle East, and Africa markets through a partnership with Yellow Card announced in June 2025.

Flutterwave, Africa's $3.1 billion payments unicorn, announced a tie-up with Polygon Labs in October 2025 to offer USDC and USDT settlement for enterprise clients including Uber and Audiomack. Leatherback is also competing for similar corporate stablecoin payment flows, adding further pressure to the segment.

What Comes Next

Africa's cross-border payments market is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2035, according to industry analysis tracked by TechCabal, but structural barriers including slow settlement times, opaque foreign exchange fees, and restricted access to hard-currency accounts continue to limit growth.

Grey Business is positioning itself as a KYC-compliant (know your customer) alternative that gives African startups and SMEs direct access to USD accounts without requiring a US-registered entity, according to the company.

Regulatory fragmentation presents an ongoing challenge. Kenya introduced new virtual asset service provider rules in 2025, South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority has established a licensing framework for crypto firms, and Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission has issued its own crypto guidelines.

Grey's existing US and Canadian registrations provide a compliance foundation, but local licensing requirements in each African market add cost and complexity as the platform scales.

The $61.4 million figure is modest against the $205 billion moving through Sub-Saharan African on-chain networks, but Grey Business occupies a specific and growing niche: regulated, business-grade stablecoin infrastructure designed for the African commercial corridor.