Nigeria's Roqqu Sets June 29 Target to Launch Tokenised US Stocks via Ondo Finance
Lagos-based crypto exchange Roqqu plans to give its 1.8 million users access to tokenised US stocks and ETFs by the end of this month, through a partnership with US-based real-world asset platform Ondo Finance.
The product, currently in final testing, is scheduled to go live on June 29, according to Emmanuel Peter, Roqqu's Head of Trading and Markets. It will run on Ondo Global Markets (GM), a dedicated tokenised equities platform that supports more than 260 stocks and ETFs across Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain. The offering targets retail investors in Nigeria who have historically faced significant barriers to accessing US capital markets.
"We have set the end of June as the launch date; we're looking at June 29 to roll this product out," Peter said. Roqqu CEO Benjamin Enomor framed the move in broader terms in remarks published by TechCabal: "Before now, access to the world's best financial products has been limited by geography."
What Ondo Global Markets brings to the table
Ondo GM crossed $1 billion in total value locked (TVL) in May 2026, less than eight months after its September 2025 launch. That milestone made it the first tokenised stock platform to reach that threshold. Cumulative trading volume on the platform has surpassed $18 billion, and Ondo holds roughly 70 percent market share among tokenised equity issuers.
Ondo Finance's total assets under management across all products stand at approximately $2.72 billion.
Ian De Bode, President of Ondo Finance, described the TVL milestone as confirmation of a broader shift: "Crossing $1 billion in total value locked is a validation of the thesis that global investors want access to U.S. capital markets through infrastructure that is more transparent, more accessible, and more efficient than the legacy system."
A key structural detail sets the Roqqu-Ondo offering apart from competing products in Nigeria. Ondo GM holds the underlying securities at a US-registered broker-dealer and tracks total returns including dividends. That compliance architecture may prove relevant under Nigeria's Investments and Securities Act (ISA) 2025, which expanded the definition of securities to include virtual and digital assets and requires issuers to use SEC-approved custodians while filing regular audited disclosures.
A competitive market, but structural differences matter
Roqqu is the third major platform to enter the tokenised stocks space in Nigeria. Of its 1.8 million registered users, approximately 600,000 are active on a daily basis, giving the platform a notably engaged retail base to draw on at launch.
Luno Nigeria entered the space in September 2025 through Backed Finance's xStocks platform, setting a minimum investment of 100 naira (approximately $0.07) and charging a 2 percent transaction fee. Luno reported 10,000 users for the product in South Africa within its first month, reaching 30,000 combined users by year-end 2025, providing a useful scale reference for what Roqqu might expect at launch.
Blockchain.com followed in October 2025 using Ondo GM as its own infrastructure, offering shares in Apple, Tesla, and Alphabet through its DeFi wallet. That launch came roughly six months after Blockchain.com opened a physical store in Nigeria, which the company had described as its fastest-growing African market.
Roqqu has not yet disclosed its fee structure or minimum investment threshold for the new product.
The competitive context matters because Nigeria's retail investor base is both large and crypto-native. Approximately 22 million Nigerians used crypto in 2025, representing more than 10 percent of the population, and 85 percent of on-chain transactions in the country fall below $1 million in value, reflecting retail-dominated activity.
Traditional brokerage access to US stocks requires foreign currency accounts and international wire transfers, which remain out of reach for most Nigerians given persistent naira volatility. Fractionalised tokenised stocks address that gap directly.
Regulatory backdrop: T+1 settlement as a tailwind
Nigeria's SEC moved to a T+1 settlement cycle effective June 1, 2026, requiring trades to settle within one business day.
Blockchain-based settlement is near-instant by design, which puts tokenised securities in structural alignment with the regulator's stated direction. ISA 2025 gives the SEC primary jurisdiction over tokenised securities, and the commission runs an incubation program that Luno Nigeria has applied to, though neither Luno nor Roqqu holds confirmed approval for this specific product category. Roqqu's provisional SEC Nigeria licence status for the tokenised stocks offering was not confirmed at the time of publication.
Pan-African expansion in view
Roqqu has signalled plans to extend the tokenised stocks product to Kenya and Ghana, pending regulatory approval in each market.
The company already operates in Kenya following its 2025 acquisition of Flitaa, a Kenya-based exchange.
Kenya ranks among the top five markets globally for crypto adoption by Chainalysis metrics, giving Roqqu an existing user base to build from if approvals come through.
The Sub-Saharan Africa crypto market reached roughly $205 billion in size in 2025, a 52 percent increase year on year, and the region ranks third globally for crypto adoption growth.
If Roqqu's tokenised equity product gains traction in Nigeria and clears regulatory hurdles in additional markets, it would be the first African exchange to operate a multi-country tokenised equities distribution network at meaningful scale. For now, the June 29 launch date remains the first test of whether that broader ambition is achievable.