thestreet.com
African businesses are going global. The financial infrastructure helping them get there has not kept up, until now.
Daya, a stablecoin-native payments company founded by Nigerian entrepreneurs, has raised $2.4 million in pre-seed funding to build what it describes as a financial operating layer for African businesses that operate across borders.
The round was led by Hivemind Capital, with participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and Aptos Foundation.
The problem Daya is solving
African businesses that import, export, hire across countries, or manage treasury in multiple markets typically rely on a patchwork of local banks, foreign exchange desks, crypto ramps, payment processors, and manual spreadsheets to move money.
The result is slow settlement, opaque exchange rates, trapped working capital, and little visibility into where money is at any given moment.
Daya's platform consolidates all of that into a single dashboard. Businesses can collect payments, convert currencies, hold value in stablecoin wallets, and move money globally, routing each transaction through the best available payment rail automatically.
The platform supports virtual accounts in U.S. dollars, Hong Kong dollars, and Chinese yuan, and also offers APIs for developers who want to embed cross-border payment infrastructure into their own products.
Who is building it?
Daya was founded by Aleph L and Paul Joe, both Nigerian operators with deep roots in African financial infrastructure. The pair previously co-founded Helicarrier, one of Africa's earliest crypto exchange and stablecoin remittance platforms, which was backed by Y Combinator in 2018.
Both founders have also held roles at Circle, Microsoft, and Lyrik Ventures, giving them experience across stablecoin infrastructure, developer APIs, and African fintech.
"The winners in this market will not just own the payment rails; they will own the workflows," said Paul Joe, co-founder of Daya.
"That is why Daya is building both the application layer that companies use every day and the API layer that platform developers can build on top of. We want cross-border payments to feel like modern software: programmable, transparent, compliant, and fast."
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Why investors are paying attention
The funding round brings together investors with a specific interest in the Africa-global payments corridor.
Hivemind Capital led the round, while Aptos Foundation joined as a strategic backer.
Aptos Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to the adoption and advancement of the Aptos blockchain, a high-performance layer-1 network built for speed, safety, and scalability.
The foundation has committed over $150 million in grants to support builders developing real-world financial applications on the network.
"Stablecoins are becoming essential infrastructure for businesses that operate across borders, but the real unlock comes when payments, FX, treasury, and reconciliation can move through one system," Aptos Foundation senior vice president Ash Pampati said.
He added, "Daya is building for markets where faster settlement, lower costs, and better access to dollar liquidity can have an immediate impact."
Globelink Holding, a Web3 payments firm with a footprint in Asia and Latin America, also participated and pointed to the scale of the opportunity.
According to Afreximbank data, Africa exported $189.5 billion in goods to Asia in 2024, while Asia accounted for 28.5% of Africa's $769 billion in imports, implying more than $400 billion in annual two-way trade-linked payment flows between the two regions.
"The Asia-Africa corridor alone shows the scale of the opportunity," said Kent Cai, CIO at Globelink Holding.
Kayla Phillips at Hivemind Capital framed the company as a gateway to the global dollar economy.
The bigger picture
The raise comes at a moment of significant structural change in African cross-border payments. The African Continental Free Trade Area is pushing the continent toward a unified single market.
Payment systems such as PAPSS are reducing reliance on correspondent banking and third-currency settlement. And stablecoins are increasingly being used as practical dollar rails in markets where businesses face currency volatility and fragmented liquidity.
Daya plans to use the funding for product development, corridor expansion, licensing, compliance infrastructure, and partnerships with local and global financial institutions.