Stablecoins are emerging as a potential leap forward for African finance comparable to, or bigger than, the mobile money revolution that preceded them, according to a report by Forbes Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa processed $1.4 trillion of the $2.1 trillion that moved through mobile money wallets globally in 2025, but the region still pays some of the world's highest remittance costs, averaging 8.78 percent in the first quarter of 2025, more than two points above the global average, even as it receives over $90 billion in remittances annually.
Nigeria has emerged as the continent's stablecoin hub, pulling in an estimated $59 billion in crypto-asset inflows between July 2023 and June 2024 and accounting for roughly 60 percent of all sub-Saharan stablecoin inflows since 2019. One survey found 95 percent of Nigerian respondents said they would prefer to receive payments in stablecoins over local currency. Yellow Card co-founder Chris Maurice described stablecoins as an even bigger leap than mobile money, while BlockTower's Nkahiseng Ralepeli said their core appeal is an open network that any payment system can plug into rather than a closed, proprietary rail.
Not everyone is convinced the shift is unambiguously positive. Professor Iwa Salami warned that growing dollar-stablecoin dominance risks weakening demand for African currencies over time, a concern that cuts against the push for monetary sovereignty playing out elsewhere on the continent. Pan-African Payment and Settlement System CEO Mike Ogbalu said his organization, which has already onboarded 28 African countries, is focused on building interoperability infrastructure that lets any payment provider plug in, stablecoin-based or not, rather than picking winners among the underlying technologies.