Telcoin Returns to Nairobi: The US-Chartered Digital Bank Betting Local Stablecoins Can Succeed M-PESA

What To Know:

• Telcoin sponsored the Kenya Blockchain & Crypto Conference (KBCC) in Nairobi for the second consecutive year in May 2026, with its Executive Vice President, Jeff Quigley, speaking at the two-day event.
• KBCC 2026 (May 14–15) was the conference’s fourth edition, themed “Stablecoins, Payments & the Next Phase of Africa’s Digital Economy.”
• The conference attracted over 1,500 participants, including regulators, banks, fintechs, and telecom operators. Sponsors included OKX, Tether, Bitget, VALR, Luno, Kotani Pay, HoneyCoin, and PawaPay.
• The conference’s dominant message: stablecoins can solve the structural inefficiencies of cross-border payments in Africa.
• Telcoin is not a typical crypto startup. It is a US state-chartered digital asset bank that has launched eUSD (a bank-issued dollar stablecoin), plans to launch eKHS (an electronic Kenyan shilling) for East Africa, and is building the Telcoin Network.

On May 20, the Telcoin X account posted, “We were pleased to sponsor @KBCC_01 in Nairobi for the second consecutive year.

Two decades after putting mobile money on the map, Kenya is primed for the next evolution in mobile financial services, with local stablecoins powering remittances and direct merchant payments.”

Telcoin, the US-charted digital bank, wasn’t announcing an entry into Kenya. It was celebrating its second time sponsoring the now-concluded Kenyan Blockchain and Crypto Conference.

The sponsorship wasn’t the company’s only involvement with the conference. Julien Ghossoub, General Manager for Telcoin’s EMEA region, was also a speaker at the event. Last year, Jeff Quigley, Executive Vice President, Commercial, at Telcoin, was also a KBCC speaker.

Kenya’s history with mobile money, the theme of 2026’s KBCC, ‘Stablecoins, Payments & the Next Phase of Africa’s Digital Economy’, and Telcoin’s post all lend credibility to Telcoin’s claim that Kenya is primed for the next phase of mobile financial services. 

The Conference Where Stablecoins Took Centre Stage

The Kenya Blockchain and Crypto Conference (KBCC) held its fourth annual edition on May 14–15 at the A.S.K Dome in Nairobi.

In its debut edition in 2023, the theme of the KBCC was “mainstreaming Blockchain in Africa,” an indication of where the crypto sector was at the time.

The theme of subsequent years also included stakeholders trying to justify and drive blockchain innovation across the continent.

This year, the theme was blunter: “stablecoins, Payments & the Next Phase of Africa’s Digital Economy.”

More than 1,500 participants attended. Regulators, commercial banks, fintechs, and telecom operators were all in attendance. The message from the main stage was consistent: cross-border payments in Africa are still broken.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest remittance fees in the world, with fees averaging over 8%, nearly triple the UUN’srecommended 3%.

Settlement times add an extra layer of complexity, stretching up to two weeks in some cases. Stablecoins, speakers argued, could fix the problem, but regulation within the continent needs to keep pace. 

Daniel Mainda, CEO of the Nairobi International Financial Centre Authority, speaking at the conference, said the Kenyan government wants Nairobi to be “the home of technology and startups on the continent.”

Kenya’s VASP framework, being finalised jointly by the Central Bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority, will determine whether that ambition translates into infrastructure. 

Meet Telcoin: The US Digital Bank Betting on Kenyan Stablecoins

Telcoin is not a typical crypto conference sponsor. It is a digital asset bank chartered under the Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance; the first entity of its kind regulated at the US state level.

It has launched eUSD, a bank-issued dollar stablecoin. Telcoin has also raised $25 million in pre-Series A funding to build out its banking operations.

Its TEL token was listed on Kraken in January 2026 and, earlier in May, surged roughly 76% in a single week as the Africa narrative and broader US stablecoin regulation momentum drew investor attention. Market cap is around $285 million, with a fixed supply of 100 billion tokens.

Telcoin’s presence in Kenya predates this conference. The company established a legal presence in the country in 2024–2025 and partnered with Powerhive in March 2025 to build a blockchain-powered mobility financing platform. It has been developing its Digital Cash product, designed to plug into existing mobile money rails and process remittances and merchant payments at total fees of 2% or less, ever since. 

The infrastructure underpinning all of this is the Telcoin Network, a blockchain where validators are not miners or anonymous stakers but GSMA-member mobile network operators.

The same telecoms that run M-PESA, MTN Mobile Money, and Airtel Money across the continent would, in Telcoin’s model, form the security layer of the settlement network.

A mainnet launch targeting 50-plus MNO validators globally is slated for 2026, though a confirmed date has not been announced.

Why Kenya? M-PESA, Mobile Money, and the Next Twenty Years

Telcoin’s project is ambitious, but its connection to telecommunications and mobile systems makes Kenya the perfect place for it. 

The case for Kenya as the proving ground starts with its current infrastructure. As of December 2025, the country had 78.4 million SIM subscriptions, putting its penetration rate at 149.5%.

Smartphone penetration has reached 92.9%, so nearly 93 out of every 100 mobile devices on Kenyan networks are smartphones.

In 2007, Safaricom launched M-PESA in Kenya. Smartphones were rare, but bank branches capable of serving the country’s growing population were scarce.

M-PESA solved a problem and let people transfer money via SMS, and it worked. M-PESA now serves tens of millions of users across multiple countries and is one of the most successful mobile money platforms ever built.

But M-Pesa was designed for domestic use and runs on Safaricom’s centralised network. The moment money needs to cross a border, it falls into the correspondent banking system that charges 8% and takes days.

Telcoin’s thesis is that the next chapter should look like this: stablecoins denominated in local currencies, alongside eUSD, a planned eKHS (electronic Kenyan shilling). Then, moving more cheaply and faster across borders on blockchain rails and then routing into the mobile wallets Kenyans already use. The stablecoin is part of the proposed infrastructure, not the product.

M-PESA recently began exploring blockchain integration through its partnership with the ADI Foundation, announced in January 2026. The mobile money giant is not standing still.

The question Telcoin is answering is whether a regulated foreign bank can issue a local-currency stablecoin and slot into that ecosystem before the incumbents build their own version.

There are also regulatory concerns. Telcoin is chartered in Nebraska and plans to issue a Kenyan shilling-denominated asset. That puts the product at the intersection of US state banking law and Kenya’s incoming VASP framework. 

It is not yet clear how Kenyan regulators will categorise a local-currency stablecoin issued by a foreign bank. How that gets resolved will be instructive for the broader African stablecoin market.

What Telcoin’s Kenya Bet Signals for African Crypto

Telcoin’s project, M-Pesa, and AADI’s partnerships are part of a broader wave of proposed integrations of stablecoins into existing mobile money infrastructure.

LemFi and Tether also announced a stablecoin remittance partnership aimed at solving the high-cost, low-speed issue most Africans face with international transactions.

Telcoin and the KBCC 2026 are arguing that dollar stablecoins alone are not the end state for African payments infrastructure. Local-currency stablecoins that reduce foreign exchange friction, combined with mobile network operators as validators and mobile wallets as the front end. This plan could build something closer to a continental version of what M-PESA achieved nationally.

Whether Telcoin can execute it remains to be seen. What the second consecutive KBCC sponsorship makes clear is that the company is not testing the market. Telcoin is betting Kenya picks what comes next.