Kora, a Nigerian-founded fintech that provides payment rails for businesses across African markets, has launched One Rail, a product that integrates stablecoin payment and settlement options into its existing network.
The new product allows eligible merchants in supported markets to accept payments in dollar-backed stablecoins USDT and USDC, convert between supported assets, and settle funds to bank accounts, mobile wallets, or stablecoin wallets through Kora’s existing infrastructure. Kora said it is expanding access in stages, with supported functions varying by market and the payment rails enabled for each merchant.
The move comes as African fintech infrastructure providers, including Onafriq and Fincra, are increasingly turning to stablecoin-based options for cross-border payments. For payment companies, stablecoins offer a potential alternative to move dollar-denominated value between markets.
If firms can convert those balances into local currencies when needed, they may reduce the amount of working capital tied up in prefunded accounts. The savings would depend on the availability and cost of local liquidity, foreign exchange (FX) conversion, and payout services.
One Rail brings that settlement layer into Kora’s existing payment infrastructure, allowing merchants to receive and send stablecoins without managing the underlying blockchain infrastructure themselves. The fintech said it wants stablecoin payments to work like any other payment method, without requiring businesses to manage wallets, blockchain infrastructure, or use separate reconciliation systems.
“If you go into your bank in Nigeria to do a wire to, say, China, it’s going to take you at least three days—the money goes from Nigeria to New York, from New York to Hong Kong, then from Hong Kong to mainland China,” Dickson Nsofor, Kora’s founder and chief executive officer, told TechCabal in an interview. “If you do the same transaction with a stablecoin, it’s less than two minutes end to end, at a fraction of the cost.”
A stablecoin can move between compatible blockchain wallets within minutes. Yet, the time and cost of a full cross-border payment depend on factors including fiat conversion, FX transactions, compliance checks, and the destination market’s payout infrastructure.
Stablecoin adoption and its potential to reduce frictions in cross-border payments are driving interest in the technology. Nigeria has accounted for roughly 60% of stablecoin inflows into Sub-Saharan Africa since 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
US dollar-backed stablecoins also play an important role in this market. About 99% of the stablecoin market value is denominated in US dollars as the underlying currency, helping to increase digital dollar accessibility for emerging markets facing shortages.
Cross-border payment companies often maintain local-currency balances across multiple markets to meet payout needs, tying up capital until those funds are used. In 2022, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Basel-based global bank that serves central banks, identified funding costs and liquidity management as key challenges in cross-border multicurrency payments.
Now, the global bank is testing whether tokenised central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits—digital versions of money banks hold—could improve multicurrency settlement, underscoring a broader interest in using digital representations of financial assets to move money across borders.
“Prefunding is still [a] fundamental way companies do business today,” Nsofor said. “That does not negate the fact that stablecoins will, in the future, be the best way to avoid prefunding altogether; you just hold a stablecoin, and based on the payment need, you convert. That’s where the whole world is tending.”
However, stablecoins do not remove the need for local currency liquidity. A payment company still needs access to Tanzanian shillings, Kenyan shillings, or other local currencies when a recipient needs to be paid. That liquidity can come from the company’s own balance, an FX provider, a bank, or a local payout partner.
Kora said it currently prefunds markets where local liquidity is limited, citing Tanzania, where Kora launched in April, as an example. Stablecoins could eventually let the company hold liquidity in digital currencies and convert it into local currency when a payment is needed, reducing the capital tied up across individual markets, according to Nsofor.
Other fintechs seem to be experimenting with that thesis. In May, Tanzanian-founded remittance fintech NALA secured up to $50 million in debt funding from private credit firm Liquidity to prefund transfers, expand payment corridors, and support larger enterprise clients. NALA is building stablecoin payment infrastructure to support faster settlement and reduce FX costs, the fintech said in April.
Much ado about stablecoins
Stablecoins are attracting interest as a payment and settlement tool, although their use for commercial payments remains limited relative to traditional payment systems. At a Bank of Japan seminar in April 2026, Pablo Hernández de Cos, general manager of the BIS, said stablecoins accounted for an estimated $390 billion in real economy payments globally in 2025. However, that was still a small fraction of the estimated $200 trillion in annual global cross-border payments, according to a 2026 paper presented at the BIS Annual Conference.
Kora operates in more than eight markets, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Tanzania. For merchants, One Rail adds stablecoin wallets to Kora’s existing payment infrastructure. Businesses can receive USDT or USDC, track and reconcile transactions through Kora’s dashboard, hold balances in digital dollars, or convert funds into supported local currencies for transfer to local bank accounts.
“Cross-border commerce in Africa is hindered by high friction and remittance costs,” Nsofor said. “One Rail levels the playing field, enabling merchants to integrate stablecoin payments into their existing payment stack, delivering the speed, cost efficiency, and access needed to drive business growth across the continent.”
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