Daya taps Stripe-backed Tempo to move stablecoins for African businesses
Daya Pro's March-Aug '26 volume
Daya Pro is the company’s liquidity product for market makers, OTC desks, P2P traders, and crypto trading professionals
Chart: Oluwaseun Adeyanju, MariblockSource: Afriflux
Daya Pro's March-Aug '26 volume
Daya Pro is the company’s liquidity product for market makers, OTC desks, P2P traders, and crypto trading professionals
Chart: Oluwaseun Adeyanju, MariblockSource: Afriflux
The signal
African crypto is splitting in two directions. One set of companies, including Yellow Card, is building only for business payments. Another, including Daya, Roqqu, VALR, Busha and Quidax, is integrating vertically, expanding retail offerings while building business products.
Digital assets company Daya has integrated Tempo, the Stripe- and Paradigm-backed payments blockchain, as a protocol for moving stablecoins for African businesses.
Why it matters: The integration adds to a growing set of payment-focused partnerships on the continent, as crypto companies build products beyond retail trading.
Driving the news: Daya, launched in early 2026, builds infrastructure for businesses that use stablecoins, including liquidity orchestration, FX and cross-border settlement. It also offers a retail app for receiving stablecoin-powered payments internationally
- Tempo is the second blockchain Daya has announced a partnership with this year, after Aptos in June.
- The company aims to be chain-agnostic and focus on routing, liquidity and FX, cofounder and CEO Tomiwa Lasebikan said.
By the numbers: Daya Pro, the company’s liquidity product for market makers, OTC desks, P2P traders and other crypto professionals, processed $6.2m in August, up from $600,000 in March, according to data from Afriflux.
Zoom out: Although OTC desks have served business clients for years, retail trading has been the most visible part of the industry. That is changing in two directions.
- Some companies are focusing fully on payments. Yellow Card, which launched as a retail exchange, announced last October that it would shut its app and has focused entirely on institutional stablecoin infrastructure since January.
- The company told Mariblock the move followed a broader market pivot and growing demand for stablecoin-fiat payment rails. CEO Chris Maurice has said retail users were expensive to serve and margins were thin.
- Others are keeping retail and adding products around it. Roqqu has moved from spot trading into futures and is preparing payment cards and a prediction market. VALR, Blockchain.com, Busha Luno and Quidax have also added products beyond trading in the past year.
The big picture: Payments have grown as a focus as governments and regulators in several markets move to bring the industry into the formal economy.