Visa, M-Pesa Africa and Onafriq Launch DRC Stablecoin Trial.
Visa, M-PESA Africa, and Onafriq are launching a stablecoin pilot in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The project is being led by Visa’s senior vice-president and head of products and solutions CEMEA, Godfrey Sullivan. Sullivan confirmed that the Visa Pay solution will settle M-Pesa mobile wallet top-ups in stablecoins.
Sullivan said, “We have launched a proposition called Visa Pay. As you top up your M-Pesa wallet, the transaction is settled in stablecoins in the background.”
Visa Pay operates as a Payments-as-a-Service platform designed and launched in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They partnered with Onafriq.
This pilot marks the latest collaboration between Visa and M-Pesa Africa. This follows the March rollout of their jointly-developed tokenized Tap-to-Pay feature on the M-Pesa super-app in Tanzania.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo offers an ample testing ground for stablecoins and financial innovation. 30% of the country’s adult population has access to formal financial services.
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Sullivan added, “We will see banks, fintechs, and mobile network operators adopting stablecoins. To solve challenges associated with cross-border payments, remittances, and business-to-business payments. This is because existing solutions have not really cracked these problems yet.”
This Visa pilot follows similar developments from competitor Mastercard. Mastercard partnered Yellow Card, a licensed stablecoin infrastructure provider operating primarily across Africa, to test the regional application of stablecoins for cross-border remittances.
