Table Of Content
Key Takeaways:
- Daya has expanded beyond stablecoin-powered payments by introducing tokenised US stock trading.
- The launch marks a significant evolution from payment infrastructure to broader digital asset investing.
- The move follows Daya’s recent funding round and reinforces its ambition to become a comprehensive financial infrastructure platform rather than simply a stablecoin company.
Daya, which built its name on stablecoin-powered cross-border payments for African businesses, has launched Daya Stocks.
Daya Stocks offers tokenised versions of over 400 US stocks and ETFs, including Nvidia, Tesla, and the S&P 500 ETF, with a minimum investment of $1 and round-the-clock trading. The company charges a 0.25% transaction fee and plans to serve both retail users directly and businesses through APIs.
Daya doesn’t hold the shares itself. The tokens are issued through Ondo Global Markets, backed by Ondo Finance, which buys the underlying stock through the brokerage Alpaca and records ownership through the Depository Trust Company. The issuer says it holds collateral equal to at least 100.5% of the outstanding tokens. Users get blockchain-based economic exposure, including dividends and stock splits, rather than direct shareholder rights. In addition, the tokens currently can’t leave the Daya platform.
The launch comes just a month after Daya closed an oversubscribed $2.4 million pre-seed round led by Hivemind Capital, with participation from Alliance, Lattice, Globelink and the Aptos Foundation. At the time, the company framed its ambitions around becoming financial infrastructure for African businesses. Tokenised stocks are the first concrete step in that direction.
Building on the Infrastructure It Already Created
Daya’s earlier work turns out to double as the foundation for an investing product. Once a company has already solved onboarding, custody and compliance for moving money, adding a new asset class on top is a smaller lift than building it all from scratch.
Co-founder Paul Joe put it directly, framing tokenised stocks as using the same rails that moved money globally to move wealth-building access globally too.
The Bigger Trend: Stablecoin Companies Are Becoming Financial Super Apps
Daya isn’t alone. It joins Nigerian and Africa-focused platforms like NectarFi, Luno, Blockchain.com and Roqqu, all of which have launched or are preparing similar tokenised stock products. The pattern extends beyond Africa too, with exchanges like Binance and Kraken and brokerages like Robinhood pushing their own tokenisation efforts.
The common thread isn’t stock listings; it’s expansion. Fintechs which entered crypto through remittances and stablecoin settlement are steadily expanding.
Some, like Paga, have expanded into the same area with tokenized real-world assets. Others, into savings, treasury tools and yield products.
Increasingly across the continent, fintechs are using stablecoins as a foundational layer for the products.
Why Tokenised Stocks Could Matter More in Africa Than Elsewhere
For many African investors, access to US markets is limited. Those determined to access it have to navigate limited brokerage options, currency controls, high minimums and slow onboarding. All of these obstacles limit African participation in the global market. This, consequently, impacts financial inclusion and wealth-building.
Tokenisation, at least in theory, chips away at those barriers through fractional ownership, blockchain settlement and 24/7 market access. A $5 minimum is a meaningfully lower bar than what most traditional brokerages require.
That said, this is not frictionless or risk-free investing. Regulation of tokenised securities remains unsettled across most African markets. Products like Daya Stocks currently function more like closed-loop exposure on a single platform than as fully portable ownership. Investor protection frameworks are still catching up to the product.
Stablecoins Were the First Layer; RWAs May Be the Second
The industry is progressing. Crypto trading gave way to stablecoin payments, and stablecoin payments are now giving way to tokenised real-world assets (RWAs).
Stablecoins have played a role in financial inclusion on the continent by making payments and remittances cheaper and faster than most traditional channels. Tokenised real-world assets make investments more accessible.
McKinsey estimates the tokenised asset market could reach $2 trillion by 2030. However, much of that value is likely to flow to infrastructure providers like Ondo Finance and Backed Finance rather than the consumer-facing apps distributing the products.
What This Means for African Fintechs
Competition among African fintechs is likely to widen beyond remittances, payments and FX. Investments, wealth management and global market access could become new competitive layers.
That expansion would also come with new regulatory hurdles. Securities rules, investor protection requirements and licensing obligations apply differently than payments compliance does.
In exchange, companies gain new revenue streams that diversify them beyond payment processing margins.
Why This Matters
As global tokenisation accelerates, fintechs that already run regulated payment rails and compliance infrastructure may be best positioned to become the on-ramps through which African users reach global financial markets. All of that, however, is dependent on how the regulatory and custody questions get resolved along the way.
