Tayo Oviosu, group CEO of Paga, made one thing clear at Moonshot by TechCabal in Lagos: no single company will bring stablecoins into the mainstream. "No one company is going to solve it on their own," he said. "There are going to be multiple companies that have specific solutions that will target different audiences." The session, titled "The New Payment Backbone", also featured Mercy Emmanuel of Flutterwave, Ife Johnson of Juicyway, and moderator Vivian Mbene of Breet.
The conversation kept coming back to a familiar pain point. A payment from Lagos to Nairobi has long had to pass through correspondent banks in New York or London, sometimes taking days and pausing for weekends and bank holidays. Stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to currencies like the US dollar, cut out those stops entirely. "Stablecoins essentially collapse this journey, as a high-speed train would," Emmanuel said. "Settlement happens in seconds; it happens in minutes."
Oviosu's take on the user experience was equally direct. Customers want payments that are fast, cheap, and arrive when promised. Most will never know a stablecoin was involved, and that is exactly the point. The goal is to embed the technology into everyday payment systems so that cross-border transfers just work, without asking anyone to learn something new.
The regulatory mood has also shifted. Oviosu noted that a few years ago, support from the Central Bank of Nigeria or the Nigerian Communications Commission for stablecoins would have seemed unlikely. Johnson added that companies need to keep earning the trust of regulators as the market grows.
The panel's shared conclusion was that the real work is about connection. Stablecoins can deliver speed and lower costs, but only if payment companies, banks, and regulators build toward common infrastructure. For African businesses that pay suppliers across borders every day, that promise of minutes instead of days is still the one worth watching.
Originally published by TechCabal.