The new feature is available to both personal and Grey Business account holders. Supported use cases include supplier payments, education fees, and travel expenses.

Grey CEO Idorenyin Obong, who co-founded the company alongside Femi Aghedo, said the gap was costing African businesses real money. "We have seen customers delay purchases, put transactions on hold, or walk away from opportunities because paying a partner in China requires unnecessary complexities," he said in an interview with TechCabal at launch.

The scale of that problem is substantial. China-Africa bilateral trade reached $203.5 billion in the first half of 2026 alone, up 24% year-over-year according to Chinese customs figures compiled by BitKE. Nigeria sourced roughly 31% of its total imports from China in Q4 2025. South Africa pulls in an estimated $23.57 billion worth of Chinese goods, and Kenya another $4.31 billion in 2024.

Despite those volumes, African importers have routinely relied on dollar-denominated correspondent banking chains that add fees of $15 to $40 or more per transaction and multi-day delays, or informal broker networks that carry their own risks. In Nigeria, chronic foreign exchange liquidity constraints mean many importers cannot easily fund USD accounts at all, making Grey's stablecoin funding option a structural necessity rather than simply a cheaper alternative.

Stablecoins Are Already Doing the Heavy Lifting

Grey's yuan product runs on top of infrastructure the company has already built around stablecoin settlement. USDC and USDT now represent the largest single payment channel on Grey Business by volume, displacing traditional fiat methods. That reflects a broader shift across the continent: B2B stablecoin payment volumes in sub-Saharan Africa grew from under $100 million per month in early 2023 to more than $6 billion per month by mid-2025, a roughly 60-fold increase in 30 months, according to data compiled by Fincra.

Stablecoins account for 43% of all crypto transactions on the continent, and 79% of African crypto users hold them, compared to 60% in other emerging markets and 45% in high-income countries, according to a 2026 Transak report.

What Grey has formalized follows a model the payments industry calls the "stablecoin sandwich," a term the Fincra Blog has used to describe the structure: a customer converts local currency into USDT or USDC, moves that value across borders using crypto rails, and the receiving end converts into the destination currency. Grey now handles the final conversion into yuan and the deposit into a Chinese bank account, removing the manual steps that previously required informal brokers or multiple intermediary banks.

Grey Business, launched in February 2026, processed $61.4 million in total payment volume within its first four months of operation. The company itself began as a virtual account service for African remote workers and freelancers before pivoting to SME and business payments with the launch of Grey Business, building the stablecoin settlement infrastructure along the way that now underpins this product. The company serves roughly 3 million users across 70 countries and supports payouts to more than 170 destinations. It is regulated by FinCEN in the United States and FINTRAC in Canada, and it completed Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch.

Institutional Yuan Infrastructure Is Catching Up

Grey is not operating in isolation. At the institutional level, Standard Bank of South Africa became the first African bank to gain direct access to China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) in June 2025 and has since cleared more than 8 billion yuan, approximately $1.2 billion, through the network.

In June 2026, the People's Bank of China co-authorized Standard Bank and ICBC to establish a Renminbi Clearing Bank of Africa, covering 19 African countries.

Zambia went a step further in December 2025, allowing Chinese mining companies to pay corporate taxes in yuan, the first regulatory decision of its kind on the continent.

What Grey and competing fintechs are building sits on top of this institutional scaffolding and extends it to small businesses and individuals.

A Competitive Market Taking Shape

Grey is not alone in targeting the Africa-China corridor. LemFi, a UK-based remittance company, already supports yuan transfers. Raenest lists China as a payout destination.

Daya, a Nigerian stablecoin-first startup, raised $2.4 million in pre-seed funding in June 2026 from investors including Hivemind Capital, Lattice Fund, Alliance DAO, the Aptos Foundation, and Globelink Investment, and is reportedly growing more than 40% month-over-month.

The competition matters because the winner of this corridor may not simply be the cheapest option. As TechCabal has noted, once a Chinese supplier receives yuan payments through a specific channel and the process works reliably, switching costs rise on both sides. The fintech that owns the supplier relationship earliest has a structural advantage that goes beyond the product itself.

Regulatory Tailwinds and Risks

The African regulatory environment for digital assets has shifted meaningfully in the markets where Grey operates. Nigeria's April 2025 Investment and Securities Act extended formal oversight to digital asset service providers. Kenya enacted its Virtual Asset Service Providers Act in October 2025, creating a licensing regime for crypto firms operating in the country. South Africa has approved more than 248 crypto asset service providers under its formal licensing framework. Together, these changes reduce friction for compliant operators and provide a more predictable footing for products like Grey's yuan service. At the same time, any tightening of People's Bank of China controls over yuan outflows could affect the settlement leg of the product, a risk worth monitoring as the China-Africa corridor draws more fintech attention.

For the stablecoin ecosystem specifically, Grey's launch is a meaningful signal. It demonstrates that African B2B traders are using crypto infrastructure primarily for practical economic necessity, and that a regulated company is willing to put its compliance framework behind that behavior at scale. For Grey, yuan payouts extend its product into one of the most commercially significant corridors in global trade, and represent the company's clearest move yet from its origins as a virtual account provider for freelancers toward a full-service cross-border payments platform for African businesses.