Daya Integrates Tempo Blockchain to Scale Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments for African Businesses

What to Know:

• Daya, a Lagos-based fintech, has integrated Tempo’s payments-focused layer-1 blockchain into its cross-border platform.
• The integration adds a new settlement rail to Daya’s existing virtual USD accounts, FX, and payment card products.
• It targets African businesses facing high correspondent banking fees and multi-day cross-border settlement delays.
• The move follows Daya’s $2.4 million pre-seed round and its earlier Aptos-powered Africa–UAE payment corridor pilot.
• Tempo has also partnered with Flutterwave, expanding its footprint among African payment platforms.

Solving the African Enterprise Settlement Bottleneck

African fintech platform Daya has integrated Tempo’s blockchain to expand instant, low-cost cross-border settlement rails for businesses and trade corridors across the continent.

Despite recent advancements, moving money across African borders, or between Africa and the rest of the world, is still a complicated and expensive process. The traditional method still runs through a patchwork of correspondent banks, FX desks, and manual reconciliation. African cross-border payment fees average between 5% and 10%. Settlement delays often leave working capital trapped in transit.

For businesses that need to settle transactions quickly and avoid the troubles that come with operating in a currency-volatile environment, this delay is expensive.

Daya allows its users to collect local fiat currency and settle in USD, EUR, GBP, and stablecoins. ​By adding Tempo as an additional settlement engine, Daya ensures that underlying fiat-to-stablecoin movements occur on a high-throughput network without requiring end users to manage blockchain infrastructure directly.

Speaking on the move, Daya CEO, Tomiwa “Aleph” Lasebikan, said, “We want African businesses to move between local currencies and stablecoins without having to manage the infrastructure underneath. Adding Tempo gives us another payments-first settlement rail while Daya continues to handle routing, liquidity, and FX behind one product experience.”

Daya + Tempo: Technical & Operational Architecture

Daya’s newest stack addition, Tempo, is a payments-first layer-1 blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. Tempo settles transactions in stablecoins, targeting sub-second finality and predictable fees regardless of network congestion. Gas fees on Tempo can be paid directly in stablecoins, removing extra operational requirements for a business’s finance department. 

Tempo’s transaction memos are built to align with ISO 20022. ISO 20022 is the messaging standard banks already use. For businesses, this means payment details such as invoice references and order IDs accompany the transaction rather than being lost in a bare wallet-to-wallet transfer. This simplifies enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration and back-office reconciliation.

By plugging Tempo into its existing routing engine, Daya adds another settlement option alongside existing rails. This allows the platform to pick the fastest or cheapest path for a given payment, all within a single merchant-facing product.

Josh Itzkovitz, GTM at Tempo, said, “Daya is building the financial infrastructure African businesses need to operate across borders. We’re glad to support that work as Daya brings more stablecoin payment flows onto a network designed for payments.”

Tempo has courted a broad roster of design partners since launching its mainnet in March 2026, including Visa, Shopify, and Nubank. Daya’s integration further extends that network into African trade corridors.

Scaling Africa’s Emerging Stablecoin Ecosystem

The Tempo integration adds to a run of infrastructure moves for Daya this year. In June, the startup closed an oversubscribed $2.4 million pre-seed round led by Hivemind Capital, backed by the Aptos Foundation, Lattice, Alliance, and Globelink. The company says the funding has been earmarked for new payment corridors and licensing.

That same month, Daya partnered with HashKey MENA and Aptos to pilot a stablecoin payments corridor connecting African markets to Middle Eastern liquidity through regulated on- and off-ramps.

Tempo is a different kind of partner in that mix; a settlement layer built specifically for enterprise payment flows, one that Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payments company, partnered with earlier this year.

Why It Matters for African B2B Trade

There are many problems plaguing African trade. Finance gaps, FX availability and cost, and settlement speed are on the list. These things cost African exporters and importers actual capital and affect business growth.

It’s estimated that cheaper cross-border payments could lead to stronger trade across the continent, a growth that could generate as much as $292 billion in income gains for Africa. 

A settlement rail that clears near-instantly and reconciles automatically with existing accounting systems closes part of that gap, without requiring businesses to replace the local currencies they still operate in day-to-day.