Sending money across African borders is still painfully expensive. Fees run between 5% and 10% per transaction, settlement takes days, and businesses often have zero visibility into where their money actually is. Daya, a Nigerian fintech startup founded in October 2025, just raised $2.4 million to fix that.
The oversubscribed pre-seed round, announced on June 24, was led by Hivemind Capital with participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and the Aptos Foundation. It’s a meaningful vote of confidence for a company that’s barely eight months old and already showing over 40% month-on-month growth in 2026.
More than just payment rails
The platform combines stablecoin settlement with local fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, virtual multi-currency accounts, smart FX routing, compliance tools, and APIs. In English: businesses can receive payments in stablecoins, convert to local currency, manage treasury across multiple denominations, and stay compliant, all from one system.
Co-founders Aleph Lasebikan and Paul Joe aren’t building blind. Lasebikan previously worked at Helicarrier, while Joe brings experience from Circle and Microsoft.
The Africa-UAE corridor pilot
In June 2026, the startup launched a pilot project with Aptos Foundation and HashKey MENA to build a stablecoin payment corridor connecting Africa and the UAE. The corridor runs on the Aptos blockchain.
HashKey MENA’s role on the UAE side adds regulated crypto infrastructure to the equation, which matters enormously for compliance-conscious businesses that need to move money across jurisdictions without triggering regulatory headaches.
Why this matters for investors
Before this round, the company raised $350,000 from Alliance DAO in 2025. Going from that seed capital to a $2.4 million oversubscribed pre-seed in under a year, while posting 40%-plus monthly growth, is the kind of traction curve that tends to attract Series A attention quickly.
The risk profile is what you’d expect for a pre-seed company operating in emerging markets. Regulatory frameworks for stablecoins across Africa remain uneven. Nigeria, Daya’s home base, has oscillated between crypto skepticism and cautious engagement. Any regulatory tightening could complicate operations.