The buzz around stablecoins is no longer confined to crypto circles in Africa and other emerging markets. Fintechs embed them into products for payments, remittances, payroll, and cross-border settlements. Yet the appeal is not obvious to everyone. Many people are still trying to understand what stablecoins do, and much of the public discussion assumes a level of familiarity that does not always exist.
Stablecoins offer the speed of blockchain while pegging their value to a currency such as the U.S. dollar. In markets where dollar access is limited or banking systems are slow and expensive, they can function as an immediate upgrade to financial infrastructure.
Blockradar, a Nigerian wallet-as-a-service provider founded in June 2024, builds plug-and-play stablecoin wallet infrastructure for fintechs, allowing companies launch a stablecoin product without hiring a blockchain engineering team or handling complex custody and compliance systems. Between June 2024 and August 2025, Blockradar claims it has processed over $100 million in on-chain volume and issued tens of thousands of wallets.
I spoke extensively with Morgan Williams, Blockradar’s cofounder and chief operations officer (COO), who told me that stablecoin rails are attractive to fintechs because they solve specific bottlenecks in the infrastructure layer. Some of its rivals, such as Yellow Card, Flutterwave, and Onafriq, are also pushing into cross-border payments and blockchain-based settlement.
“We saw three big problems,” Williams said. “First, the wallet provider market was fragmented, and very few offered a full suite of embedded wallets plus treasury management in one place.”
“Second, integrating wallets often required deep blockchain engineering skills, which many fintech teams did not have. Third, some providers only offered custodial wallets with rigid structures, which removed the flexibility fintechs needed to fully embed stablecoin rails.”
Why fintechs are super interested
The stablecoin pitch to African fintechs goes beyond speed. In these African markets where dollar scarcity makes cross-border trade harder, stablecoins allow companies and individuals to preserve purchasing power in a stable unit without opening a U.S. bank account. In remittance corridors with high costs, they enable instant transfers that settle in minutes instead of days.
The technical barrier has been the biggest blocker for fintechs. Blockchain networks work differently from traditional card or bank systems. Developers must handle private key management, network fees, transaction confirmations, and address formats across multiple chains. Getting all this right without compromising user experience or security is not trivial.
“We are a foundational part of operating when you are building on stablecoins,” Williams said. “Just like a fintech would not build its own cloud servers or card processing gateway from scratch, they should not have to build a wallet stack either.”
How Blockradar earns revenue
Unlike most payment companies that take a percentage of every transaction, Blockradar charges a monthly subscription, which it did not disclose, based on the number of wallets issued and the volume processed. This tiered model lets fintechs predict their costs as they scale.
“Many customers find we save money through automated treasury management or enable entirely new revenue streams. That value makes our model sustainable without undercutting margins,” Williams said, arguing that this also helps profitability for both sides.
This model also ensures that fintechs can run as many transactions as they want without worrying that each one will incur an additional charge. Developers can design high-frequency payment flows without cumulative fees eroding their economics, which is critical for microtransaction-heavy use cases like gig worker payouts.
Making blockchain invisible to the user
Blockradar is non-custodial by design, meaning users hold their private keys, which maximises security and aligns with the ethos of decentralisation. However, the non-custodial design can be intimidating for users who have never interacted with blockchain.
To solve this, Blockradar builds features that hide complexity, such as gasless transactions. On most networks, a user needs to hold the native token to pay for transaction fees. With Blockradar, the fintech covers those fees in the background through a gas station architecture: a user can send stablecoins without acquiring ETH, MATIC, or other tokens.
Multi-chain addresses are another layer of simplification that the startup uses. In traditional blockchain use, different chains require different address formats. Blockradar’s system lets a single address receive payments across multiple compatible chains. This cuts down on failed transfers caused by users sending funds to the wrong chain and improves cross-chain liquidity for fintech customers.
Some fintech clients go further by entirely abstracting crypto from the user. “Some of our customers, though, completely abstract away crypto and collect fiat from their customer, and then they convert it into USDC/T on behalf of their customer and offer their customer what feels like a “USD” account and get rid of the nuances and complexity of crypto completely,” Williams explained.
Compliance baked into the API
The main non-technical risk for stablecoin adoption in emerging markets is regulatory exposure. Many regulators are still defining their stance, and banks can cut off services if they detect crypto flows without clear compliance oversight. Across Africa, blockchain regulation is fragmented, with countries like Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa testing or deploying blockchain in payments and land registration. Others, like Zambia and Tanzania, lack clear rules. This patchwork of policies enables experimentation but limits large-scale adoption.
Blockradar integrates anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-transaction (KYT) checks directly into the same API customers use for wallet functions. Fintechs can set rules to hold or block transactions based on their risk parameters, removing the need to integrate separately with compliance vendors.
Embedding compliance into the same API reduces latency and eliminates reconciliation issues between payment and screening systems. Fintechs can demonstrate to regulators that every transaction has been screened without building a separate audit trail.
Blockradar believes in being “lean”
Blockradar’s team consists of just five people, spread across Singapore, London, San Francisco, Nigeria, and Dubai. Williams says a small, high-impact team avoids the slow decision-making and internal politics that often bog down larger companies.
Williams and cofounder Abdul Suleiman’s backgrounds include Coinbase, Paystack, Uber, and PayPal. “We think globally but allow our customers to execute locally because we know a payment flow that works in SF will not necessarily work the same way in Lagos, Manila, or Bogotá,” Morgan added.
Headline volume can be misleading. Williams pays more attention to wallet activation rates, repeat usage, and adoption of advanced features such as swaps, bridges, and custom contract calls. These are stronger signals of long-term product fit and stickiness.
This approach also reflects the economics of infrastructure businesses. A spike in new wallets without sustained activity may look good on a chart, but it delivers little revenue or network effect.
Where is demand strongest?
Asia is Blockradar’s fastest-growing region. Some countries, such as Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, have introduced crypto regulations enough for fintechs to operate without constant fear of sudden bans. Others, like mainland China, are restricting the use of stablecoins for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
Latin America is compelling for different reasons. Stablecoins offer a hedge against currency devaluation and make remittances cheaper. Europe has been adopting stablecoins at a slower pace, but it plays a vital role in setting regulatory standards and creating corridors that connect other regions.
What does the next decade of stablecoins look like?
Williams expects stablecoin wallet infrastructure to become as normal as mobile money services like M-PESA in East Africa. “It will be the backbone for payments, B2B settlements, cross-border transactions, payroll, and remittances. Stablecoins will be there whether the user sees it or not,” Williams said.
Most consumers have no idea they are using Stripe when they pay online, but it powers a huge portion of global e-commerce. Blockradar aims to be that silent infrastructure for stablecoin payments.
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