Idorenyin Obong had a pointed message for the audience at Moonshot by TechCabal 2026 on Thursday: Grey is done waiting for the continent's payment infrastructure to catch up. The co-founder and CEO announced that the company has been quietly building its own payment rails between African markets, because the old route, converting through US dollars every time two African currencies need to meet, is too slow, too expensive, and too unreliable for the customers Grey is serving.
Obong named two specific headaches his team is trying to fix. The first is reliability, making sure money lands when the customer was promised it would. The second is liquidity, having enough of the right currency on hand to actually complete the transfer. Grey has partnered with providers across Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana to source local currencies and settle transfers in real time, cutting out the dollar middleman on what Obong called "exotic currency pairs."
The infrastructure push is showing up in Grey's product calendar too. The company launched Grey Business in February, a multi-currency account aimed at startups and small businesses. Then in July, it added local-currency deposit options in Ghana and Kenya, letting users fund their accounts by bank transfer or mobile money. That is two significant launches in one year, which signals this is not a slow pivot.
Grey is not the only player thinking this way. The Central Bank of Nigeria is reportedly pursuing closer regional payments integration, including potential links to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, known as PAPSS, which allows African countries to settle cross-border transactions in their own currencies. Whether fintech-built rails and central bank ambitions end up complementing each other or competing is a question the industry is still figuring out.
Originally published by TechCabal.