Africa-Focused Stabyl Raises $2.7M to Build FX Liquidity Platform

BREAKING NEWSJune 28, 2026 at 8:29 PM UTC

TLDR

Stabyl secured $2.7 million in pre-seed funding for its foreign-exchange liquidity platform in Africa led by Konga.
Stabyl provides infrastructure for payment companies and banks to source foreign exchange and settle transactions faster.
The platform uses a central limit order book for automatic order matching, supports stablecoins like USDT and USDC, and aims to enhance liquidity transparency in African payments.

Stabyl raised $2.7 million in pre-seed funding to build a foreign-exchange liquidity platform for financial institutions and payment service providers in Africa.

The round was led by Konga, which will also serve as Stabyl’s first real-world test case and naira settlement partner through KongaPay. The startup was founded by Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, Zachary Schwartzman and Michael Anyi.

Stabyl is not a consumer app or a cross-border payments company. It provides infrastructure that allows payment companies, banks and large institutions to source foreign exchange and settle transactions faster. The company currently focuses on the naira-dollar corridor, with plans to add more African currency pairs.

The platform uses a central limit order book that allows buyers and sellers of foreign exchange to post and match orders automatically. Stabyl says this replaces manual processes where treasury teams call banks, payment providers and liquidity partners to compare rates and secure supply.

Settlement can take place through both banking rails and stablecoins. Stabyl supports USDT and USDC, while wallet infrastructure is provided by DFNS. The company said it will use the funding for licensing, compliance and infrastructure as Nigeria’s digital-asset rules become clearer.

Key Takeaways

Stabyl is targeting one of the least visible but most important problems in African payments: liquidity. Many payment companies can collect and move money, but they still need access to foreign exchange before they can settle cross-border transactions. In Nigeria, that process is often fragmented, slow and dependent on multiple counterparties. Stablecoins can help because they allow faster settlement and dollar-linked liquidity, but they still need to connect back to local banking rails. That is the gap Stabyl wants to fill. By building a marketplace for institutions to match foreign-exchange orders, the company is trying to make liquidity more transparent and easier to access. Its timing is helped by Nigeria’s changing regulatory environment, after the central bank lifted its crypto banking restrictions and the securities regulator began bringing virtual asset providers into a formal framework. The challenge will be trust. Liquidity platforms need strong compliance, reliable settlement, deep counterparties and regulatory approval. If Stabyl can build that, it could become an infrastructure layer for fintechs, banks and payment companies working across African currency corridors.

Venture Capital