Sending money across borders for business has always been time-consuming and expensive. Banks charge high fees, exchange rates are reduced, and transfers can take several days.
The costliest in Africa, the World Bank says, sending money to sub-Saharan Africa costs an average of 7.9% for a $200 transfer, the highest of any region.
A new partnership between Aptos Foundation, HashKey MENA and African payments platform Daya aims to reduce that cost using stablecoins, which are digital tokens pegged to traditional currencies. The three companies are building a regulated payments corridor connecting the Middle East and Africa, with transactions settled on the Aptos blockchain.
How the new payment route works
Both partners signed what is being called a “corridor pilot agreement”, which is a pilot of a new payment route between the two regions. A typical transaction looks like this:
- UAE businesses convert their local currency into stablecoins through HashKey MENA.
- These stablecoins move across the Aptos blockchain.
- Daya converts them into local African currency and delivers them to the recipient.
The aim is to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper and easier to track while complying with local regulations. Each partner has a role. HashKey MENA is a Dubai-based virtual asset service provider regulated by the UAE Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) that handles conversions between stablecoins and fiat currencies. Daya is a pan-African payments platform that moves funds across the African continent and settles in local currencies. The Aptos Foundation supports the blockchain on which Corridor will anchor.
Aptos in the center
Stablecoin activity on Aptos is growing rapidly. The value of stablecoins circulating on the network exceeded $1.9 billion, an all-time high. According to Aptos, the market capitalization of stablecoins grew from approximately $649 million to more than $1.2 billion in the first half of 2025, and will exceed $1.9 billion in 2026.
This corridor extends HashKey’s Asia Connect network, which runs on Aptos. Since the opening of the first corridor between Hong Kong and the Philippines in June 2025, the network has added Vietnam through partnerships with CAEX and VPBank, and the UAE through HashKey MENA. Africa is the newest addition so far.
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Africa’s stablecoin moment
Africa is one of the fastest growing markets for stablecoins. Businesses and consumers increasingly use them to move funds across borders, hedge currency fluctuations, and reduce transaction costs.
The data shows how far it has come. According to Chainalysis, stablecoins currently account for about 43% of all cryptocurrency trading volume in sub-Saharan Africa, with on-chain value in the region exceeding $205 billion from July 2024 to June 2025, an increase of about 52% year-on-year and the third fastest growth among all regions.
The savings can be dramatic. Mercy Corps Ventures’ pilot to pay freelancers in Kenya found that using stablecoins reduced fees from 29% to 2%.
What has been missing so far is a regulated infrastructure to connect that demand to other parts of the world.
Daya’s Paul Joe sums it up:
“Africa is already at the forefront of stablecoin adoption. What is missing is regulated infrastructure and scalable liquidity to connect that demand to the rest of the world. By joining Hashkey’s Asia Connect network as an African node with payments in Aptos, we will connect to a network that already stretches from Hong Kong to the Philippines, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates.”
Where does this fit into the stablecoin boom?
This partnership comes as stablecoins become more mainstream. The market has grown to over $300 billion, and banks, payment companies and regulators are increasingly looking to them as a faster and cheaper way to move funds across borders.
A March 2026 IMF document found that markets increasingly expect stablecoins to play a larger role, especially in cross-border payments where existing systems remain slow and costly.
Deployment occurs in two stages. The first allows businesses to cross borders and fund local payments, sending money at one end of the corridor and receiving local currency at the other end. If it goes well, the second phase will aim to build a broader trade payments network and allow businesses to use stablecoins to settle international transactions across supported corridors. Both phases will be carried out within the VARA regulatory framework.
