Pan-African payments infrastructure provider Kora says its new stablecoin payment rail can help reduce the cost of some cross-border transactions in Africa from as much as 2% to below 0.3%. This can be done while cutting settlement times from several days to about 30 minutes or less.
We recently spoke to Kora’s CEO and founder Dickson Nsofor who told TechArena that the product will address the fragmentation and delays that affect cross-border payments across African markets.
Nsofor says a typical cross-border transfer can take around three days and cost between 1% and 2%.
“With One Rail, transactions between any country in Africa settle near instantly,” Nsofor said. This puts the settlement time at less than 30 minutes and the transaction cost at lower than 0.3%.
Kora adds stablecoins to its payment infrastructure
One Rail is designed to operate alongside Kora’s existing fiat payment infrastructure and not as a separate crypto platform.
“We are enabling businesses that don’t even need to know anything about crypto or the blockchain,” he told TechArena.
Nsofor said a business that operates across 15 or 20 African countries can collect funds in one market and use stablecoins to rebalance positions in another market.
Regulation remains a key hurdle
The expansion and adoption of stablecoin payments across Africa will also depend on how digital assets and payment providers are regulated.
Nsofor said Kora is taking a market-by-market approach. The company will obtain the necessary licences where needed and that it takes a “regulatory first” approach.
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Also Read: Kotani Pay Partners with DCSPay to Expand Stablecoin Payouts Across Africa
