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Stabyl, a fintechstartup focused on institutional foreign exchange (FX) infrastructure, has secured a $2.7 million in pre-seed funding led by Konga to accelerate the development of its platform for banks, payment service providers (PSPs) and other financial institutions across Africa.
The company said the investment would be deployed towards regulatory licensing, product development, compliance and expansion into additional African markets.
Founded by former Konga Group Co-Chief Executive Officer, Prince NnamdiEkeh, alongside Zachary Schwartzman and software engineer, Michael Anyi, Stabyl aims to address longstanding inefficiencies in Africa’s foreign exchange market by providing a unified liquidity platform for institutional participants.
The founders conceived the idea while studying for their MBA at the University of Oxford between 2021 and 2022, where discussions on stablecoin technology evolved into a broader vision of improving access to foreign exchange liquidity across the continent.
According to the company, Nigeria recorded a net foreign exchange inflow of $6.92 billion in February 2026, yet banks, payment service providers and large businesses still depend on fragmented networks of liquidity providers to source foreign exchange.
Schwartzman said the company’s objective is to consolidate liquidity on a single platform.
“Our goal is to connect these participants on one platform, creating the deepest and most accessible liquidity pool on the continent,” he said.
Unlike consumer payment applications, Stabyl operates at the infrastructure layer, enabling financial institutions to source foreign exchange more efficiently before payments are executed.
The platform replaces the traditional process of contacting multiple banks and liquidity providers with a central limit order book (CLOB), where participants can automatically post and match buy and sell orders.
Anyi explained that the automated matching process eliminates the manual negotiations and delays that often result in changing exchange rates before transactions are completed.
“Everybody on Stabyl can create a transaction, and that transaction gets matched and queued immediately. The manual process of making calls, negotiating rates and coordinating transactions is removed,” he said.
The startup aggregates liquidity from participating financial institutions and payment service providers while also maintaining liquidity reserves through selected partners to ensure transactions can be completed even during periods of high demand.
For settlement, the platform combines traditional banking infrastructure with blockchain technology.
KongaPay serves as Stabyl’s official naira settlement partner, while digital asset custody is provided through DFNS. The platform currently supports the USDT and USDC stablecoins and said its infrastructure remains blockchain-agnostic, selecting networks based on transaction costs, speed and client requirements.
Ekeh noted that stablecoins alone cannot solve Africa’s foreign exchange challenges.
“Stabyl is connecting stablecoin rails with fiat banking rails because you can’t separate the two. Stablecoins are effective, but users still need to convert into local currencies,” he said.
The company also offers application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow institutional customers to integrate its liquidity infrastructure directly into their treasury management systems.
Rather than profiting from exchange rate spreads, Stabyl said its revenue model is based on charging transaction fees on trades executed through the platform.
Schwartzman said the strategy is designed to encourage greater transaction volumes.
“What we want to do is grow the liquidity pool. As liquidity grows, institutions can execute more transactions and create greater value across the ecosystem,” he said.
Stabyl’s launch comes amid a more supportive regulatory environment for digital assets in Nigeria following the lifting of restrictions on cryptocurrency-related banking services and the introduction of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers.
“The regulatory direction is clear. We prefer to build this infrastructure correctly from the outset in collaboration with regulators,” Schwartzman added.
Although companies such as Onafriq, Yellow Card and Fincra operate within Africa’s payments ecosystem, Stabyl said it views them as potential customers rather than competitors because its infrastructure is designed to provide liquidity to payment providers and financial institutions.
Initially focused on the naira-to-dollar corridor, the company plans to expand into additional African currency pairs as it secures regulatory approvals across the continent.
Ekeh said the partnership with Konga aligns with the group’s long-term vision for African commerce.
“Konga’s vision is to be the engine of trade and commerce in Africa, and foreign exchange liquidity is the fuel that powers that engine. Stabyl’s infrastructure is critical to bringing that vision to reality,” he said.
