A new Nigerian-founded fintech startup, Stabyl, has emerged from stealth mode with $2.7 million in pre-seed funding to tackle one of Africa’s biggest financial infrastructure challenges, making foreign exchange (FX) trading faster, more transparent and easier for banks, payment companies and other financial institutions.
The funding round, led by Konga, comes as demand for efficient foreign exchange infrastructure continues to grow across Africa, where businesses often struggle with fragmented liquidity, delayed settlements and manual trading processes.
Unlike many fintech companies focused on consumer payments or money transfers, Stabyl is building the technology that sits behind those transactions. Its platform enables financial institutions to source foreign exchange from a shared liquidity pool instead of negotiating separately with multiple banks and liquidity providers.
Read also: Yellow Card’s Swiss approval opens new stablecoin route for capital flows into Africa
The startup was founded by Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, former co-chief executive officer of Konga Group, Zachary Schwartzman and software engineer Michael Anyi.
The idea for the company dates back to conversations between Ekeh and Schwartzman while they were MBA classmates at the University of Oxford between 2021 and 2022. Both believed that stablecoin technology could help solve the long-standing inefficiencies surrounding foreign exchange across African markets. They later brought in Anyi, whose experience building financial infrastructure helped transform the concept into a commercial platform.
Their timing comes as Africa’s digital economy continues to expand and businesses increasingly require quicker access to foreign currencies to settle international transactions.
According to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s monthly economic report, net foreign exchange inflow into Nigeria reached $6.92 billion in February 2026. Yet many institutions still depend on fragmented networks of banks and liquidity providers to obtain foreign exchange, creating delays and increasing transaction costs.
“Our goal is to connect these participants on one platform, creating the deepest and most accessible liquidity pool on the continent,” Schwartzman said.
Replacing manual FX trading
Stabyl is not a consumer app and does not directly process cross-border payments.
Instead, it focuses on the stage before payments are made, where banks, payment service providers and large businesses secure foreign exchange.
Ekeh explained that a large company such as Konga typically contacts several banks and liquidity providers to compare exchange rates before making a transaction. During that process, exchange rates may change, forcing treasury teams to restart negotiations or accept less favourable prices.
Stabyl replaces that manual process with a central limit order book (CLOB), where buyers and sellers can post orders that are automatically matched in real time.
“Everybody on Stabyl can create a transaction, and that transaction gets matched and queued immediately. That entire process of having to make calls, hold transactions, figure out rates and do all this manual labour is completely removed,” Anyi said.
The company aggregates liquidity from participating financial institutions and payment service providers while maintaining additional liquidity reserves through selected partners to ensure transactions can still be completed during periods of high demand.
Combining traditional banking with stablecoins
One of Stabyl’s key differentiators is its ability to connect conventional banking systems with blockchain-based settlement.
For naira transactions, the company has partnered with KongaPay as its official settlement partner, while digital asset custody is supported by DFNS through its multi-party computation wallet technology.
The platform currently supports the USDT and USDC stablecoins but says it remains blockchain-agnostic, selecting networks based on transaction costs, settlement speed and customer requirements.
“Stabyl is connecting stablecoin rails with fiat banking rails because you can’t separate the two. Stablecoins are great, but they’re not great on their own. You still need to convert back to local currency,” Ekeh said.
Institutions using the platform can settle transactions in either traditional currencies or stablecoins. Stabyl also offers application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing banks and financial institutions to integrate the platform directly into their treasury systems.
Unlike many foreign exchange businesses that profit by buying and selling currencies at different prices, Stabyl says its business model is based on transaction fees.
Rather than earning money from exchange rate spreads, it charges a small fee for every trade processed through its platform.
The company believes lower transaction costs will encourage institutions to channel more trading volume through its network, ultimately creating deeper liquidity.
“What we want to do is grow the liquidity pot. That is where we see the opportunity: by growing liquidity for clients,” Schwartzman said.
Regulatory changes create opportunity
The launch also comes as Nigeria’s regulatory environment for digital assets becomes more supportive.
Since the Central Bank of Nigeria lifted restrictions on cryptocurrency-related banking activities in 2023 and the Securities and Exchange Commission introduced its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme, more fintech companies have begun developing compliant blockchain-based financial services.
Schwartzman said the company intends to work closely with regulators as it expands. “The regulatory direction is clear. We would rather build this infrastructure correctly from the start, working hand-in-hand with regulators, than arrive late to a settled market,” he said.
Not competing with payment companies
Although companies such as Onafriq, Yellow Card and Fincra are expanding payment infrastructure across Africa, Stabyl says it sees them as customers rather than competitors.
Instead of competing for payment volumes, the company wants to become the infrastructure layer that provides liquidity to payment firms, foreign exchange providers and banks.
“We are trying to provide liquidity to other liquidity providers, foreign exchange companies, payment service providers and financial institutions. 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,” Schwartzman said.
Read also: Daya raises $2.4m pre-seed to power stablecoin payments for African cross-border trade
Expansion plans
The newly secured funding will be used to accelerate regulatory licensing, strengthen compliance, expand the technology platform and enter additional African markets.
Beyond leading the investment round, Konga will also serve as the company’s first major commercial deployment through KongaPay, providing naira settlement services.
Ekeh said the partnership fits naturally into Konga’s broader strategy of supporting trade across Africa.
“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,” he said.
For now, Stabyl is concentrating on the naira-to-dollar corridor but plans to expand into more African currencies as it secures regulatory approvals.
If successful, the company could position itself as one of the foundational infrastructure providers powering the next phase of Africa’s cross-border financial system, helping banks and payment firms move money more efficiently while reducing one of the continent’s biggest barriers to digital commerce.
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