PayPal Is Bringing PYUSD to Africa’s Fast-Growing Stablecoin Market — But Will Africans Actually Use It?

What to know:

• In addition to making PYUSD available in 70 markets worldwide, PayPal has included a dedicated expansion into African markets. 
• Users can buy, hold, send, receive, and convert the dollar-backed stablecoin from their PayPal wallets.
• PayPal’s complex history in the African market, as well as USDC and USDT’s dominance in Africa, adds an extra layer of challenge to the widespread PYUSD adoption.

Earlier this year, PayPal took its biggest step in its stablecoin ambitions by making PayPal USD (PYUSD) available across 70 markets worldwide. By May 20, the company announced a dedicated expansion into select African markets.

Users in newly supported markets will be able to make transactions in PYUSD using their PayPal accounts. The new update gives users the option to convert to local currency when withdrawing funds for everyday spending. Businesses accepting PYUSD, the company says, can access settlement in minutes rather than the days or weeks that traditional payment rails typically require.

PayPal’s Crypto Journey: From Experiment to Expansion

PYUSD launched in the United States in August 2023. It made PayPal one of the first major legacy payments companies to issue its own stablecoin. Rather than integrating third-party crypto assets on its platform, PayPal wanted skin in the stablecoin game itself. PayPal’s history made it a promising new entry into the stablecoin game, a sentiment echoed in its CEO’s words during the announcement.

“The shift toward digital currencies requires a stable instrument that is both digitally native and easily connected to fiat currency like the U.S. dollar. Our commitment to responsible innovation and compliance, and our track record of delivering new experiences to our customers, provide the foundation necessary to contribute to the growth of digital payments through PayPal USD.” 

PYUSD is issued by Paxos and is backed 1:1 by the US dollar. To encourage users, PayPal also offered additional incentives, such as a 4% reward rate for those who held the stablecoin in the PayPal app. 

Despite its promising start, PYUSD hasn’t been able to challenge USDC and USDT in either circulation or trading volume. In fact, PYUSD has spent much of its early life trailing USDC and USDT by a significant margin.

This 70-market expansion is PayPal’s answer to that. It is an attempt to secure the liquidity and ubiquity that a stablecoin needs to matter. In May Zabaneh’s words, PayPal’s SVP and General Manager of Crypto, “The current system still charges too much, takes too long, and settles on timelines that were designed for a different era.”

PayPal and Africa — Complicated History

PayPal’s current expansion isn’t its first foray into African markets. In fact, PayPal has operated across parts of Africa for years, but the relationship has never been straightforward. In the early 2000s, the company completely shunned the African market. By 2004, sub-Saharan markets such as Nigeria faced heavy restrictions imposed by PayPal. In 2010, the company made its first official entrance into Africa with a partnership with South Africa’s First National Bank. 

By 2014, the company expanded into Nigeria, but this expansion came with its own rules. It partnered with Firstbank and limited users to outbound transactions, meaning they could send funds but not receive them. 

By the 2020s, the company expanded into Nigeria with a partnership with Flutterwave, but that came with its own issues. Many users reported sudden account restrictions with their funds in PayPal becoming out of reach. As a result, many users in African markets, especially Nigeria, walked away. 

The context matters for how this expansion gets received. In late 2025, PayPal announced a $100m investment in African and Middle Eastern markets, including acquisitions, venture funding, and minority investments. In 2026, it announced a partnership with Paga, a Nigerian mobile money payment system. Many, especially on social media, met the move with skepticism.

How this new announcement will be received remains to be seen. African users and businesses that tried to build around PayPal in the past and hit walls will not automatically read a press release as a fix. PayPal will need to earn trust in the African market again, and trust here is earned through functionality, not announcements.

What the Africa Expansion Actually Offers

For consumers, PYUSD provides access to a regulated, dollar-backed asset that can be used to send funds internationally at a lower cost. This could serve as a direct response to the high fees that have long plagued remittance corridors into and out of Africa.

For businesses, the improved settlement speed is the headline. Proceeds that are accessible in minutes rather than days have real implications for working capital and cash flow management, particularly for small and medium enterprises with cross-border operations.

Otto Williams, PayPal’s SVP and General Manager for the Middle East and Africa, described the expansion as being about “delivering tangible value to the people and businesses driving growth in these dynamic markets.” He added, “Consumers gain a flexible, stable way to move funds faster, while businesses can streamline cross-border payments and improve settlement times.”

The Harder Question: Can PYUSD Compete?

Africa’s crypto market already has a ton of active players, preferred stablecoins, and growing crypto regulation and adoption. USDT and USDC are the preferred stablecoins in many African markets. 

USDT’s relationship with African markets is built largely through peer-to-peer trading, informal dollar demand, and crypto-native behavior. USDT has become an alternative savings tool in many of these markets that have experienced local currency devaluation.

USDC has made inroads through more regulated, institutional channels and partnerships with African fintech infrastructure. Both have years of liquidity, exchange integration, and user habits on their side.

For PYUSD, the advantage is distribution. Plugging into PayPal’s existing global user base means it doesn’t have to build from scratch. PayPal’s users are familiar with digital assets and payment systems. For them, PYUSD offers a stablecoin without requiring them to learn to navigate a new platform or manage a separate wallet. That is a real edge.

The limitation is that much of Africa’s most active stablecoin usage occurs entirely outside platforms like PayPal. It happens on exchanges, in P2P markets, and through crypto-native wallets where USDT’s network effects are already locked in.

Converting users who have built financial habits around USDT into PYUSD users will require more. It will require reliability, competitive fees, and seamless local currency conversion that actually works across diverse markets.

Africa is one of the world’s largest remittance-receiving regions, and stablecoin adoption is on the rise. Stablecoins have already quietly become part of how people on the continent manage day-to-day business, access to dollars, and cross-border payments. If PYUSD can earn the trust of its African market, it could become a competitor to USDC and USDT in a way it hasn’t before.