Dickson Nsofor used to run a hardware business in Lagos. Every time he needed parts from a manufacturer in China, he paid, then he waited. Not a day. Not three days. Ten to fourteen days, while his money bounced through correspondent banks before it reached his supplier. He couldn’t restock until it landed, couldn’t promise customers a delivery date, and just had to sit tight. Nsofor now runs Kora, and his company’s new Kora stablecoin payments tool is built for merchants who’ve lived that same wait.
On September 29, Kora, a pan-African payments company once called Korapay, launched One Rail, letting merchants collect, hold, convert, and settle payments in stablecoins like USDT and USDC, right alongside their local currency. No crypto wallet needed. No blockchain degree required. It plugs into the dashboard merchants already use.
Why a Two-Week Wait Became Normal
That 10 to 14 day wait wasn’t a glitch. It was the system working as designed. Cross-border payments in Africa typically route through several correspondent banks, and each one adds a day or two, plus a fee. A World Bank tracker puts the global average cost of moving money across borders at 6.49%. In Africa, Kora says that number climbs to 8% to 8.8%.
Picture a small electronics importer in Kenya paying a $20,000 invoice. At 8.5%, banking fees alone eat $1,700 before the goods even ship, straight out of a small business’s margin.
What Kora Stablecoin Payments Actually Change
Stablecoins skip most of that relay. A payment that would crawl through correspondent banks for two weeks can settle in minutes once both sides can send and receive USDT or USDC. Kora’s research backs this up: in corridors with instant domestic payment systems, transfers landed in under 20 minutes. Standard bank transfers in South Africa, by comparison, still take one to two business days.
One Rail gives merchants a few concrete new options:
- Accept stablecoins from international customers and suppliers, with no separate crypto account to open.
- Hold a stablecoin balance as a hedge against a sliding local currency, instead of converting everything the moment it arrives.
- Convert to local currency and settle into an existing bank account on their own schedule, not the bank’s.
Nsofor is careful not to oversell it. In his own words, reported by crypto.news:
“They are solving a practical problem first.”
That’s a far cry from crypto-as-investment hype. Stablecoins here aren’t a bet on price going up. They’re a faster pipe for money that was always going to move.
Who Actually Feels This
This isn’t aimed at traders. Picture the shop owner in Accra restocking phone cases. Or the freelance designer in Nairobi billing a client in Berlin. Or the small importer in Lagos who, like Nsofor once did, just needs money to arrive before the shelves go empty. Kora says 78% of African crypto owners already hold stablecoins. That demand was already there. One Rail just gives ordinary merchants a built-in way to use it, no new software required.
It echoes what Flutterwave did with its own stablecoin rails for African shops earlier this year, and what Citi’s stablecoin settlement launch with Coinbase did for far bigger businesses. The gap between a multinational bank and a corner shop is closing.
None of this erases the work still ahead. Kora needs banking partners, licensing, and currency conversion in every market, and pricing isn’t public yet. This is early, not finished.
Still, if your business pays or gets paid across a border, ask your provider this month whether stablecoin settlement is on its roadmap. A year from now, merchants still waiting two weeks for a wire might be the exception, not the rule.