DCSPay and Kotani Pay Partner to Bring Stablecoin Payouts to Africa

What to know

• DCSPay and Kotani Pay have partnered to connect stablecoin-funded payouts to local payment rails across six African markets, starting in Nigeria
• The deal targets the “last-mile” problem: stablecoins solve the cross-border leg cheaply, but converting them into spendable local currency remains costly and unreliable
• Both companies frame the partnership explicitly around Asia-Africa trade and payment connectivity, not just domestic African payouts

The Announcement

​Stablecoin infrastructure provider DCSPay has partnered with Kenya-based fintech Kotani Pay to expand local currency payout channels across major African markets. The rollout begins in Nigeria before expanding to Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa and Tanzania.

Speaking on the deal, Sean Dong, DCSPay’s senior director of business, said: “Expanding into new markets shouldn’t require businesses to rebuild their payment infrastructure country by country.”

“By connecting to Kotani Pay’s existing local rails,” he added, DCSPay is “making it easier for businesses to extend stablecoin-funded payouts into African markets through a single integration.”

Kotani Pay CEO Felix Macharia framed the deal as evidence of stablecoins’ impact on cross-border trade. “Our partnership with DCSPay demonstrates how stablecoins, combined with robust local payment rails, can remove friction from cross-border commerce.”

Under the arrangement, DCSPay handles the stablecoin side of a transaction, including wallet, checkout, onboarding, compliance, and initiating the transfer. Kotani Pay converts the incoming USDT or USDC into local currency and pays it out through mobile money, USSD, or other domestic channels.

The Last-Mile Liquidity Gap, in Numbers

​Global adoption of stablecoins for business-to-business commerce has increased. Stablecoins make up roughly 43% of all crypto transaction volume in Africa. Much of that volume comes from business owners paying suppliers. Real problems with the current structure drive this surge.

According to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s most expensive region to send money to. The average cost is 8.78% of the amount transferred as of Q1 2025. That’s roughly triple the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal target of 3% by 2030, and it hasn’t moved much in years.

Sending money out isn’t cheap either. Of the G20 countries, South Africa remains the most expensive to send money from, costing over 15% for about $200 and over 10% for $500. Banks are the most expensive channel by far, averaging 14.55% globally.

While using digital assets and moving the funds on the blockchain resolves the international leg of a transfer, it doesn’t resolve the last leg of converting those stablecoins to local currency. 

Industry research on stablecoin remittances finds that while the on-chain transfer itself is nearly free, the off-ramp is typically the single most expensive and least reliable step in the chain.

While on-chain transfer costs are often very low, off-ramp costs can range from 1%-4% per transaction. That’s the specific layer Kotani Pay is built to supply, and the one DCSPay’s business customers currently lack a single integration for across multiple African markets.

The Asia-Africa Corridor

The DCSPay-Kotani Pay partnership exists inside a fast-growing trade and payments relationship between Asia and Africa.

On the trade side, China-Africa commerce hit a record $348 billion in 2025, up 17.7% year on year. In the 2024-25 financial year, bilateral trade between India and Africa grew to over $100 billion. In 2024, trade between Asia and Africa grew to over $400 billion.

That’s a large and growing volume of cross-border payment demand, concentrated in corridors like Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt, regions that also happen to be among DCSPay and Kotani Pay’s launch markets.

In the announcement, both companies say they’re determined to “strengthen payment connectivity between Asia and Africa,” and provide a “more direct link between global stablecoin flows and the local payment methods used by recipients across African markets.”

Kotani Pay’s CEO, Felix Macharia, said, “Whether you’re paying a supplier in Lagos from Singapore or settling merchant payments across Africa, businesses can now move value in real time, securely and efficiently. That is the infrastructure we are building, connecting global capital to local African economies.”

Aptos-based network HashKey Asia Connect, for instance, has targeted the same corridor. In June 2026, it extended its stablecoin payment corridor from an initial Hong Kong-Philippines route into a Middle East-Africa leg.

Where This Fits

African remittance and payout costs remain stubbornly high. The solution most are turning to, stablecoins, still faces issues when it’s time to convert them into spendable local currency. With growing connections between the two regions, a large and growing share of the stablecoin liquidity flowing toward Africa originates in Asia.

DCSPay supplies the stablecoin-funding side of that chain; Kotani Pay supplies the local off-ramp across six markets. Whether that combination meaningfully narrows the 8.78% average cost gap will depend on how much liquidity and coverage the partnership can actually sustain. But the direction it’s pointed in matches where the volume and the cost problem both already are.