Daya raises $2.4M to build stablecoin payment stack for African businesses
Sending money across African borders is still painfully expensive. Fees run between 5% and 10% per transaction, settlement takes days, and businesses often have zero visibility into where their money actually is. Daya, a Nigerian fintech startup founded in October 2025, just raised $2.4 million to fix that.
The oversubscribed pre-seed round, announced on June 24, was led by Hivemind Capital with participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and the Aptos Foundation. It’s a meaningful vote of confidence for a company that’s barely eight months old and already showing over 40% month-on-month growth in 2026.
More than just payment rails
The platform combines stablecoin settlement with local fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, virtual multi-currency accounts, smart FX routing, compliance tools, and APIs. In English: businesses can receive payments in stablecoins, convert to local currency, manage treasury across multiple denominations, and stay compliant, all from one system.
Co-founders Aleph Lasebikan and Paul Joe aren’t building blind. Lasebikan previously worked at Helicarrier, while Joe brings experience from Circle and Microsoft.
The Africa-UAE corridor pilot
In June 2026, the startup launched a pilot project with Aptos Foundation and HashKey MENA to build a stablecoin payment corridor connecting Africa and the UAE. The corridor runs on the Aptos blockchain.
HashKey MENA’s role on the UAE side adds regulated crypto infrastructure to the equation, which matters enormously for compliance-conscious businesses that need to move money across jurisdictions without triggering regulatory headaches.
Why this matters for investors
Before this round, the company raised $350,000 from Alliance DAO in 2025. Going from that seed capital to a $2.4 million oversubscribed pre-seed in under a year, while posting 40%-plus monthly growth, is the kind of traction curve that tends to attract Series A attention quickly.
The risk profile is what you’d expect for a pre-seed company operating in emerging markets. Regulatory frameworks for stablecoins across Africa remain uneven. Nigeria, Daya’s home base, has oscillated between crypto skepticism and cautious engagement. Any regulatory tightening could complicate operations.
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
You may also like
AI investment frenzy ready for another surge? With the Fed rate hike decision settled, reverse buying appears as US Treasury bonds face their "most painful moment"
Bob Michele from JPMorgan Asset Management stated that his team has started buying long-term bonds from the United States, Japan, and Australia, saying that current prices are "simply too cheap." Michele believes that a series of central bank actions and potential stabilization trends in the Middle East are key driving factors supporting the debt market.
"The New Bond King": The moment of reckoning is inevitable; a fully defensive stance should be adopted in the next 6 to 9 months
Gundlach believes the market has entered a "difficult phase." The excessive expansion of AI capital expenditures intertwined with the rapidly growing private credit market is bound to lead to a reckoning; credit spreads related to AI have already widened significantly, and the complex risk exposures between private credit and the insurance industry will trigger severe consequences in the next downturn. He has reduced his portfolio's AI exposure to zero and shifted toward equal-weight equities, high-quality bonds, local currency emerging market debt, and gold commodities.
Will Pi Network face further losses? Why THESE signals say yes
Crypto prices
More
