Explainer · 9 min read
Who is building on Arc from Africa
Africa-founded fintechs in Circle's Arc grant cohort — Blockradar, Kolan, Myaza, Payrit, Flezpay, SFx Money — and the corridor volume behind the headlines.
Africa is the single most concentrated region in Circle's Arc Developer Grants cohort — BitKE reported 8 of 19 Cohort 1 recipients as Africa-founded, and six named companies covered in this directory's grants coverage (Blockradar, Kolan, Myaza, Payrit, Flezpay, and SFx Money) are corridor-payments businesses serving African users specifically. Every company below was checked against its current live site before this page was written; some have evolved their public positioning since their grant-era description.
Why Africa specifically
Real-economy stablecoin payments — remittances, cross-border B2B settlement, and dollar-access products for users in countries with volatile local currencies or limited banking infrastructure — are one of the clearest product-market fits for stablecoins anywhere in the world, and African fintechs have been building this infrastructure for years independent of any single blockchain. Circle's grant program appears to have found and funded a cluster of that existing activity rather than creating it: every company below had an operating product before its documented Arc grant involvement.
Blockradar
Blockradar provides wallet-as-a-service infrastructure — non-custodial wallet creation, gasless transactions, automated treasury management, real-time AML screening, and multi-chain stablecoin support (USDT, USDC, and Nigeria's cNGN) — sold to other fintechs rather than to end users directly. Its current live site confirms this as an active, operating product with plug-and-play APIs and free developer signup; the company states its team includes people from Coinbase, Uber, PayPal, and Nestcoin. Reported processing volume varies by source — Built on Arc's fact pack cites over $950 million across 182,000 wallets, while a separate ecosystem summary cites over $600 million across Africa and Latin America — both are reported figures, not independently audited.
Builds on Arc: Wallet-as-a-service infra fintechs embed to offer non-custodial, gasless wallets, built toward Arc. · Role: Serves · Category: Wallets & Custody → Embedded wallets · Project page
Kolan, formerly Hurupay
Kolan (@kolan_xyz) offers dollar-denominated accounts with US-style routing numbers for non-US users, converting deposits to USDC. It has rebranded from its original grant-era name of Hurupay. Reported figures place it operating across 50-plus countries with volume and user figures that vary by source and date — treat any specific number as a reported claim from the company's own channels or press coverage rather than an audited fact.
Builds on Arc: Issues dollar-denominated accounts with US routing numbers that convert deposits to USDC for non-US users. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page
Myaza
Myaza operates a pan-African payment network built around multi-currency wallets spanning 21 African currencies, with grant-era reporting citing 25,000-plus registered users and $15 million in cumulative volume. Its current live business site describes a considerably larger scale — 3,400-plus businesses across 20-plus markets and $1.4 billion processed — reflecting the company's broader global business-banking product today rather than the narrower African-corridor figures reported around its grant. The two sets of numbers measure different things (a specific product slice versus total company volume) and shouldn't be added together or treated as describing the same activity.
Builds on Arc: Runs a pan-African payment network offering multi-currency wallets across 21 currencies, building toward Arc. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page
Payrit
Payrit (@payritHQ) is a cross-border mobile USDC wallet built for users to transact in their own local currency. Its current site confirms an active USDC wallet product ("store, send, and receive USDC stablecoins" with "instant transfers" and "low fees" for international transactions). Reported figures specific to Nigerian users: over 36,000 transactions worth $1.9 million.
Builds on Arc: Cross-border mobile USDC wallet letting users send and hold value in their own local currency. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page
Flezpay
Flezpay (@flezpay) was reported in grant-cohort coverage as an AI-driven smart-QR retail payments tool, with 1,613 integrated retail stores and $31,000 in reported monthly recurring revenue at the time of that reporting. Flezpay's current live site describes a broader business-management platform — point of sale, inventory, payroll, online storefront, and an AI business manager — with backing referenced from the Tony Elumelu Foundation, and does not foreground the smart-QR or Arc-specific angle on its current homepage. This is consistent with a product that has expanded beyond its original grant-era description rather than a discrepancy to flag as a concern.
Builds on Arc: AI-driven smart-QR retail payments tool for merchants, adjusting prices in real time. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page
SFx Money
SFx Money (@usesfxmoneyapp) operates a stablecoin digital bank connecting Turkey, 16-plus African countries, the US, UK, and EU. Reported growth from 300 users in December 2024 to 8,800 by July 2026 — a real but still early-stage user base by fintech standards, reported by the company rather than independently audited.
Builds on Arc: Stablecoin digital bank moving money between Turkey, Africa, the US, UK and EU. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page
Real-economy corridor volume versus headline volume
It's worth being explicit about what these figures do and don't represent. None of the volume numbers above are trading volume, token-price activity, or speculative crypto turnover — they're reported figures for actual remittance, merchant-payment, or account-balance activity, the real-economy use case stablecoins are most plausibly suited for. That distinguishes this cohort sharply from the market-wide stablecoin figures cited elsewhere on this site: total stablecoin supply sits around $308 billion as of 13 August 2026, and headline gross transaction volume runs near $46 trillion annualized — but real-economy payments volume across the entire global stablecoin market is estimated at only $350–550 billion per year. The African corridor companies above are a small, specific slice of that real-economy figure, not a slice of the much larger and mostly-unrelated trading-volume number. Their reported figures, in the tens or low hundreds of millions of dollars each, are consistent with genuine but early-stage corridor payment businesses — not evidence of outsized scale, and not something Built on Arc restates as fact rather than as a reported claim.
What's still open
None of these six companies has a confirmed live deployment on Arc mainnet as of 2 September 2026, because Arc mainnet does not yet exist. Their relationship to Arc specifically — as opposed to their existing, often multi-chain or off-chain stablecoin operations — is best understood as "grant-funded to build toward Arc" rather than "already running production volume on Arc." ViFi Labs, a seventh grant recipient, is reported specifically as deployed on Arc's testnet, distinguishing it from this group; it is not a corridor-payments company in the same sense and is covered separately in Circle's Arc grant recipients, confirmed.
Sources: - LIST | Out of 19 Startups Selected for Cohort 1 Circle 2026 Developer Grants Program, 8 Are Africa-Founded – BitKE - Overview of Arc Ecosystem Projects Under Circle - Blockradar - Myaza - FlezPay - Payrit
Questions
How many African companies are in Circle's Arc grant cohort?
BitKE reported 8 of 19 Cohort 1 recipients as Africa-founded. Circle has not published its own cohort list, and a separate report puts the total cohort at 13 rather than 19 — see Circle's Arc grant recipients, confirmed for the full conflict.
Are these companies live on Arc mainnet?
No. None can be, since Arc mainnet hasn't launched as of 2 September 2026. Their Arc involvement is grant-funded development, not a confirmed production deployment.
Are the user and volume figures for these companies audited?
No. They're reported figures from the companies' own channels or press coverage, not independently audited, and this page attributes each one accordingly.
Is Myaza's $1.4 billion figure specific to its Arc-related product?
No — that figure describes Myaza's total current business scale across its global platform, separate from the narrower $15 million figure reported around its grant-era African wallet product.
What's the difference between headline stablecoin volume and the corridor volume these companies report?
Headline volume (~$46tn annualized) includes trading and internal transfers; the real-economy payments figure ($350–550bn/year) is closer to what these corridor companies' reported volumes actually represent.
Where can I read about the full grant cohort, including non-African recipients?
See Circle's Arc grant recipients, confirmed.