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.

Through the new offering, eligible merchants in supported markets can accept payments in USDT and USDC, the two largest dollar-backed stablecoins by market value, convert between supported assets, and settle funds to bank accounts, mobile wallets, or stablecoin wallets via Kora's existing infrastructure. Stablecoins are blockchain-based tokens pegged to a reference asset, most commonly the US dollar. The company said it is expanding access in stages, with supported functions varying by market and by the payment rails enabled for each merchant.

The launch comes as African fintech infrastructure providers, including Onafriq and Fincra, increasingly turn to stablecoin-based options for cross-border payments. For payment companies, stablecoins offer a potential alternative for moving 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—balances set aside in advance so funds are available when payments must be made. The size of any savings depends 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, run 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, is 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).

Dollar-backed stablecoins also play a central role in the market. About 99% of stablecoin market value is denominated in US dollars as the underlying currency, helping to increase digital dollar accessibility for emerging markets facing shortages, according to DeFiLlama data.

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 institution that serves central banks, identified funding costs and liquidity management as key challenges in cross-border multicurrency payments, per a BIS publication.

The BIS is now 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.”

Stablecoins do not remove the need for local currency liquidity, however. 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. According to Nsofor, 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.

Other fintechs appear 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, as TechCabal reported. NALA said in April that it is building stablecoin payment infrastructure to support faster settlement and reduce FX costs, according to a company blog post.

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, according to his remarks. That figure was still a small fraction of the estimated $200 trillion in annual global cross-border payments, based on 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.”