Stabyl, a nascent fintech company, has emerged from stealth mode having secured $2.7 million in pre-seed funding, spearheaded by Konga, Nigeria’s leading e-commerce and fintech conglomerate. This significant investment is earmarked to build institutional-grade foreign exchange (FX) infrastructure across Africa, aiming to address persistent inefficiencies in cross-border transactions and currency liquidity. The venture, founded by former Konga Co-CEO Prince Nnamdi Ekeh and Oxford MBA classmate Zachary Schwartzman, with the technical expertise of software engineer Michael Anyi, seeks to create a unified platform for banks, payment service providers (PSPs), and financial institutions to access FX liquidity more efficiently and reduce settlement times.
The genesis of Stabyl lies in discussions held at the University of Oxford between 2021 and 2022, where Ekeh and Schwartzman explored how stablecoin technology could resolve the complex foreign exchange challenges prevalent in African markets. Their vision was further solidified by Anyi’s decade of experience in building financial infrastructure, transforming their conceptual framework into a tangible technological solution.
Stabyl’s operational model is distinct from consumer-facing applications or direct cross-border payment platforms. Instead, it targets the critical juncture where financial institutions procure foreign exchange prior to executing payments. As illustrated by Ekeh, a large entity like Konga currently navigates a fragmented FX market, requiring its treasury team to engage with multiple banks, PSPs, and liquidity providers to secure favourable rates. This process is often hampered by delays, leading to potential shifts in market prices and less optimal settlement rates. Stabyl aims to streamline this by replacing bilateral negotiations with a central limit order book (CLOB) system, facilitating automatic matching of buy and sell orders for foreign exchange.
“Everybody on Stabyl can create a transaction, and that transaction gets matched and queued immediately,” explained Anyi in a recent interview. “That entire process of having to make calls, hold transactions, figure out rates and do all this manual labour is completely removed.” The platform aggregates liquidity from participating PSPs and financial institutions, supplemented by its own liquidity reserves with select partners to ensure availability even during periods of high demand.
Settlement on Stabyl integrates both traditional banking infrastructure and blockchain networks. For fiat transactions, Stabyl has partnered with KongaPay as its official naira settlement partner. On the stablecoin front, DFNS, a multi-party computation (MPC) wallet provider, offers the necessary wallet infrastructure. The company currently supports USDT (Tether) and USDC (USD Coin) stablecoins, with its infrastructure designed to be blockchain-agnostic, selecting networks based on factors such as cost, speed, settlement finality, and the specific requirements of its institutional clientele.
“Stabyl is connecting stablecoin rails with fiat banking rails because you can’t separate the two,” Ekeh stated. “Stablecoins are great, but they’re not great on their own. You still need to convert back to local currency.” Practically, a PSP depositing naira via KongaPay can place or match FX orders on Stabyl. Once a transaction is executed, participants can settle and withdraw funds in either fiat currency or stablecoins. For institutions seeking direct integration, Stabyl offers APIs for programmatic access to its liquidity pool.
Unlike many FX businesses that profit from exchange rate spreads, Stabyl operates on a transaction-based revenue model, charging a low take rate on each transaction processed through its platform. This strategy is designed to incentivise higher transaction volumes and, consequently, grow the overall liquidity pool. “What we want to do is grow the liquidity pot,” Schwartzman remarked. “Therein lies the opportunity: by growing liquidity for clients. We believe that will allow clients to provide more liquidity, do more trades, and be more successful.”
Stabyl’s emergence coincides with a more favourable regulatory landscape in Nigeria for digital assets. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) lifted its ban on cryptocurrency transactions in 2023, followed by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme, which formalises compliance frameworks for virtual asset service providers. “The regulatory direction is clear,” Schwartzman observed. “We would rather build this infrastructure correctly from the start, working hand-in-hand with regulators, than arrive late to a settled market.”
While companies like Onafriq, Yellow Card, and Fincra are developing payment infrastructure across Africa, Stabyl views them as potential customers rather than competitors. “We’re trying to provide liquidity to other liquidity providers, foreign exchange companies, payment service providers and financial institutions,” Schwartzman clarified. “So, if we look at everything as a pie, we’re not trying to gain market share from this pie. We’re creating more dough to make this a bigger pie for everyone.”
By focusing on the infrastructure layer that underpins financial transactions, Stabyl aims to dismantle long-standing inefficiencies that have historically constrained cross-border commerce in Africa. The pre-seed funding will be instrumental in advancing regulatory licensing, platform development, compliance efforts, and market expansion. Konga’s role extends beyond lead investor; it serves as Stabyl’s official naira settlement partner through KongaPay and provides the company’s first large-scale commercial deployment.
Ekeh articulated the strategic alignment, stating, “Konga’s vision is to be the engine of trade and commerce in Africa, and foreign exchange liquidity is the fuel that powers that engine. Stabyl’s infrastructure is critical to bring Konga’s vision to reality.” While initially concentrating on the NGN/USD corridor, Stabyl has ambitious plans to expand into other African currency pairs, contingent on securing regulatory approvals, positioning itself as a foundational element for the continent’s future institutional financial infrastructure.
... Stabyl Secures $2.7M Pre-Seed Funding to Revolutionise Africa’s FX Infrastructure, Leveraging Stablecoins and Regulatory Shifts ... Naijaonpoint.