Table Of Content
Key Takeaways:
- Nigeria now accounts for roughly 60% of all stablecoin inflows into Sub-Saharan Africa, according to IMF-backed data referenced by Bitget Wallet.
- The milestone comes as Bitget Wallet surpasses 100 million global users, with Africa emerging as one of its fastest-growing regions.
- The figures reinforce a broader trend: stablecoins in Nigeria are increasingly being used for payments, remittances, savings, and business settlements, rather than speculative crypto trading.
Between 2019 and 2025, roughly 60% of all stablecoin inflows into Sub-Saharan Africa went to Nigeria. The figure has resurfaced this week alongside news that Bitget Wallet has crossed 100 million global users. According to Bitget, more than half of that growth is driven by the Global South, including Africa. Also remarkable is that daily payment users outnumber traders on the platform for the first time in its history.
Nigeria Now Dominates Africa’s Stablecoin Economy
The resurfaced figure comes from the IMF’s Article IV analysis, which found that Nigerian households and small businesses are increasingly turning to dollar-pegged stablecoins to move money across borders. Nigeria received approximately $59 billion in crypto-asset inflows between July 2023 and June 2024, ranking second globally in Chainalysis’s 2024 Global Crypto Adoption Index. The next year, in 2025, it ranked sixth. More than 65% of that inflow, per the IMF, was denominated in stablecoins.
Bitget Wallet’s announcement adds a second data point to the same trend. The wallet’s Onchain Payments Matrix, its settlement infrastructure, has now processed more than $177 billion in stablecoin transactions across over 80 payment rails and 100 currencies.
In Nigeria specifically, the platform’s user growth rate hit 468% in a single quarter in 2024, surging the app to Number 1 on the App Store as of June 2024. By November 2025, Bitget had launched a direct bank transfer feature in Nigeria. The feature allowed users to convert USDT and USDC into naira.
This Isn’t Really a Bitget Story
Despite the incredible “100 million users” announcement from Bitget, this story isn’t really about Bitget. The numbers from both the IMF and Bitget tell us that Nigeria is the continent’s largest stablecoin economy. This is not a surprise. As the numbers grew, various African fintechs began building towards stablecoins.
Various stablecoin settlement pilots have been launched on the continent, including one by Visa, M-PESA and Onafriq in DRC. Flutterwave, Nigeria’s unicorn, has secured investments from both Circle Ventures and Ripple to scale stablecoin payments in the region. Moves that came after its infrastructure-building partnership with Tempo. Conversation about the naira-backed stablecoin, cNGN, has also increased. HyperFX, a product from Polytope Labs, began utilising it, along with other stablecoins, for instant FX settlement.
Headline after headline, companies have aligned their moves with the rise in stablecoin adoption in Nigeria and on the continent. Bitget’s user surge reflects behaviour that has already transformed the market.
Stablecoins Have Become Nigeria’s Digital Dollar
In June, the IMF issued a warning to Nigeria. It cautioned that the increasing use of dollar-pegged stablecoins could threaten the country’s monetary sovereignty and lead to “digital dollarization.”
This warning is not without merit. Nigerians use stablecoins to address structural issues. It is no longer a simple speculative tool. So why are Nigerians using stablecoins?
Between June 2023 and February 2024, the value of the naira dropped from about 450 naira to the dollar to roughly 1600 to the dollar. It lost an estimated 40% of its value in 2024 alone. In that same period, annual inflation rose to about 35% and food inflation to about 40%. Over what seemed like a short period, people’s savings suddenly lost value, and the currency’s purchasing power dropped.
In addition, periodic FX shortages have made dollar access difficult through official channels. Layered on top of that are cross-border remittance costs. The cost of sending $200 to sub-Saharan Africa is over 8%. The global average is closer to 6%, and the UN’s target is 3%. In a country averaging $600 million in monthly diasporan remittances, 8% is a high cost.
Against that backdrop, a stablecoin is less of an investment, and more of a workaround. For many, it is a way to hold value that doesn’t erode month to month, and a way to receive money from abroad without losing a tenth of it to fees.
Payments Are Replacing Trading
The trend of stablecoins being used for real-life purposes and not trading is further reflected in Bitget’s data. According to the platform, daily payment users now outnumber traders for the first time.
Globally, card spending on the platform reached $31 million in the first half of 2026, up 191% from the second half of 2025. In emerging markets, including Nigeria, that card spend grew 416% over the same period, more than double the global rate.
For years, the industry measured crypto adoption in trading volume and exchange sign-ups. That metric is becoming less relevant. When people stop talking about trading and start talking about paying rent or a supplier in USDT, that’s usually a sign the technology has stopped being a novelty.
What This Means for African Fintech
The practical implication is that stablecoins are becoming competitive infrastructure rather than a niche product line. Companies operating in cross-border payments, treasury management, payroll, or merchant settlement that ignore stablecoins risk losing ground to competitors who don’t.
Crypto wallets themselves are shifting shape in the process. Bitget’s own services, which now include card issuance, direct bank integrations, and QR payment rails, make it look less like a trading app and more like a dollar-denominated bank account with a crypto backend.
The Bigger Question: Can Regulation Keep Up?
Beyond the potential impact on monetary policy and naira demand, the IMF also flagged financial integrity risks. Because transactions that once moved through regulated institutions are increasingly routed through wallets and exchanges, there’s an increased chance that certain transactions will slip through the cracks.
Nigeria has moved past prohibition towards supervision. The Investments and Securities Act of 2025 gave the Securities and Exchange Commission jurisdiction to license and oversee virtual asset service providers, and a separate crypto regulation bill has continued advancing through the Senate.
Similar frameworks are taking shape elsewhere on the continent. Kenya’s Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, South Africa’s FSCA licensing regime, and early-stage consultations in Tanzania. However, none of them are positioned to resolve the underlying tension the IMF describes. A licensing framework can regulate who is allowed to issue or facilitate stablecoin transactions. It cannot change the fact that millions of Nigerians are choosing dollar tokens over the naira because the naira has given them reasons to.
Why This Matters
Nigeria’s stablecoin economy didn’t emerge because a global wallet provider crossed 100 million users. It emerged because millions of households and small businesses needed a workaround for a currency that kept losing value and a banking system that made cross-border payments expensive and slow. What started as an alternative payment method has become parallel financial infrastructure, used daily by freelancers, SMEs, and diaspora families sending money home.
Bitget’s numbers, the IMF’s data, and the wave of fintech partnerships building around stablecoins in Nigeria all indicate that infrastructure follows, not creates, user behavior.
If that pattern holds, Nigeria is likely to keep shaping how stablecoins get used, and eventually regulated, across the rest of the continent.
