Vodacom and Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile money platform has put its weight behind emerging stablecoin technology, entering a partnership with ADI Foundation.
The decision fits into Vodacom’s strategy to grow its cross-border mobile payments offering for consumers and businesses, a segment that has become a hotbed of competition in Africa as people look for faster and cheaper ways to send and receive money between countries.
Semafor reported that ADI, a financial technology venture based in Abu Dhabi, plans to extend its blockchain technology to millions of Africans through a partnership with M-Pesa.
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain its value by pegging it to another asset, such as a fiat currency. The most common of these is the dollar, and examples of stablecoins include USD Coin and Tether. The other main peg for stablecoins are commodities such gold or oil.
For M-Pesa, stablecoin technologies have become attractive as a means of sending and receiving money across borders that is quicker and less expensive than traditional banking services.
In Kenya, M-Pesa processed more than 90% of all remittances to the country in the 2024 fiscal year.
ADI sees M-Pesa’s 60-million customers as key in growing its presence in Africa, contributing to its goal of connecting 1-billion people by 2030.
The company is backed by Sirius International Holding, the digital arm of IHC, a $240bn holding company.
A person in South Africa wanting to send R10,000 cash to Malawi now might pay a bus driver making the trip R500 to transport the money. For many that risk is justified given that formal channels charge as much as 15% of the total for such a transaction.
MTN charges a 4% fee for such transactions while the industry average is about 10%.
Blockchain, the technology that powers cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, has until recently been regarded as fringe and associated with finance scams. But in recent years it has gained acceptance in the mainstream, driven in part by large fund managers such as BlackRock.
Credibility
Sensing the shift, central banks and finance authorities are helping to increase credibility for fintech operators.
In October, Absa signed a deal with payments infrastructure provider Ripple to provide digital asset custody services to its customers in South Africa.
Discovery Bank recently announced plans to add trading in more than 50 crypto assets in partnership with Luno, South Africa’s leading crypto platform.
The South African Reserve Bank has flagged crypto assets and stablecoins as a new risk to the country’s financial stability, saying their rapid growth and limited regulation could allow risks to build up undetected.
In a LinkedIn post, ADI said: “With tens of millions of users across multiple countries, M-Pesa is not an experiment. It is core economic infrastructure. ADI’s partnership focus is not on disruption, but reinforcement, providing secure, policy-aligned digital rails that can support faster settlement, cross-border flows, and future financial services at national scale.
“Africa is a priority region for ADI given the scale of mobile money usage and its role in everyday commerce. This collaboration with M-Pesa represents our most significant step to date in supporting growth across the region through institutional-grade digital infrastructure.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.