Daya Raises $2.4M to Build Stablecoin Payment Stack for African Businesses

The pre-seed round, led by Hivemind Capital and backed by a strategic investment from the Aptos Foundation, is the latest bet on stablecoins as infrastructure for African cross-border trade.

Daya, a stablecoin-native payments startup focused on African businesses, has raised $2.4 million in pre-seed funding, the company told Unchained on Wednesday. The round was led by Hivemind Capital, with participation from Lattice, Alliance and Globelink, and included a strategic investment from the Aptos Foundation.

Daya is building software for companies that need to move money between African and global markets. Its platform brings together local payment rails, stablecoin settlement, FX tooling, compliance processes and reconciliation, with the aim of giving businesses one place to manage international payments and treasury.

The company says businesses can access virtual USD, HKD and CNY accounts, stablecoin wallets, payouts, treasury controls and approval flows through its platform. Daya also offers APIs for developers that want to embed cross-border payment functionality into their own products.

The startup was co-founded by Tomiwa “Aleph” Lasebikan, a co-founder of the Y Combinator-backed crypto company Helicarrier, formerly BuyCoins, and Paul Joe. According to Daya, the team has also held stablecoin, developer-API and financial-infrastructure roles at companies including Circle, Microsoft and Lyrik Ventures.

“The winners in this market will not just own the payment rails; they will own the workflows,” Joe said. “We want cross-border payments to feel like modern software: programmable, transparent, compliant, and fast.”

Daya said the funding will support product development, licensing, compliance infrastructure, new payment corridors and financial institution partnerships.

Investors framed the raise around the scale of Africa’s trade with Asia. Globelink’s Kent Cai cited Afreximbank data showing Africa exported $189.5 billion in goods to Asia in 2024, while Asia accounted for 28.5% of the continent’s $769 billion in imports — implying more than $400 billion in annual two-way trade-linked flows.

The round also follows a pilot corridor partnership between Daya, Aptos Foundation and HashKey MENA announced earlier this month.

Daya’s raise lands as African cross-border payments are being reshaped by regional trade integration, new payment systems and growing stablecoin usage in markets where businesses face expensive transfers, fragmented liquidity and currency volatility.