Codex Bets on a Stablecoin-Only Blockchain to Fix Africa’s Broken Payment System

Moving money across African borders is a masterclass in friction. A simple transaction can get entangled in a web of intermediaries, fluctuating exchange rates, and compliance delays, often taking days to settle, if it settles at all. For businesses and individuals, this uncertainty translates into lost time and real money. Now, a global blockchain startup, Codex, is making a bold wager: that a radical focus on a single type of digital asset can untangle this mess for good.

While most blockchains try to be a digital Swiss Army knife, hosting thousands of tokens and applications, Codex is building a highway designed for one thing only: stablecoins. By stripping away the noise, the startup believes it can create a settlement layer for Africa that is faster, cheaper, and more predictable than any currently available solution.

Tech Cabal reports that Codex emerged from stealth mode in April 2025, having secured $15.8 million in seed funding from notable investors, including Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase, and Circle. Founded by Haonan Li, Victor Yaw, and Momo Ong, the company is diving into the $230 billion global stablecoin market, with its sights firmly set on Africa. On this continent, the promise of seamless digital payments has yet to be fully realised.

To grasp the problem Codex aims to solve, one must first understand the current reality of cross-border payments. Sending funds from Lagos to Accra can be likened to navigating a complex financial maze, as each stop along the way incurs an additional fee. While stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to real-world currencies, such as the US dollar, were hailed as the solution, they haven’t been a perfect fix.

In practice, a digital dollar is not always a dollar. Its value can waver depending on the exchange, the blockchain it lives on, or the specific compliance checks required to convert it back into local currency.

“One USDC does not always equal one US dollar when you off-ramp into local currencies,” explains Oluwaferanmi Ajetomobi, Codex’s Africa expansion lead. “You see differences in price across exchanges, across countries, and across compliance checks. That lack of singleness is what Codex wants to solve.”

This concept, the “singleness of money”, is the core principle behind Codex. The platform is engineered to ensure that a dollar-backed stablecoin on its network is treated equally and interchangeably, regardless of its origin or destination.

Built as a Layer 2 blockchain on Optimism, Codex leverages Ethereum’s security while optimising for speed and low transaction fees. The platform supports widely used stablecoins like USDC and USDT and is already preparing to integrate Nigeria’s forthcoming cNGN.

Crucially, Codex has clearly defined what it will and will not support. Ajetomobi confirmed the blockchain will never list algorithmic stablecoins, a decision informed by the catastrophic 2022 collapse of Terra’s UST. That event wiped out over $40 billion in value and shattered trust in projects that relied on complex formulas instead of hard currency reserves. By exclusively supporting fiat-backed stablecoins, Codex aligns itself with the models that regulators are beginning to adopt and that businesses already trust.

“We only list fiat-backed stablecoins, and we work closely with issuers to ensure there is real demand,” Ajetomobi notes.

According to Africa Business, to make this ecosystem work, Codex has built “Swap Avenue,” a feature that enables instant swaps between different stablecoins across multiple blockchains like Solana, Polygon, and Tron. A business can maintain a single balance on Codex and move funds seamlessly, with transaction fees conveniently paid in USDC. This eliminates the accounting nightmare of reconciling costs in volatile assets, such as ETH or SOL. The approach is already gaining traction, with global trading firm Wintermute signed on as a customer and Nigerian partnerships secured with Canza Finance and Blockradar.

While Codex has a global rollout plan, Africa represents a unique and crucial market. Currency mismatches and inefficient settlement systems notoriously stifle intra-African trade. As Ajetomobi puts it, “Moving money from Nigeria to Ghana is trouble. Moving money from Nigeria to a French-speaking country is trouble.”

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Crypto has already found a foothold as a workaround, with remittance flows into the continent exceeding $100 billion in 2024, nearly half of which involved stablecoins. Codex sees an opportunity not just to participate in this market but to become its foundational layer. By offering predictability and liquidity, it aims to become the default settlement rail for fintechs, remittance platforms, and, eventually, traditional banks across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Morocco, and South Africa.

The greatest challenge—and perhaps the most fantastic opportunity—lies in regulation. Most African nations are still developing their frameworks for digital assets. Codex is tackling this uncertainty head-on by embedding compliance directly into its blockchain.

Every transaction is routed through built-in anti-money laundering (AML) and identity verification checks. If a payment flags a compliance issue, it is instantly reversed, preventing funds from getting trapped in a bureaucratic limbo.

“We are compliance-first,” Ajetomobi insists. “We want to ensure that any money leaving Codex for a bank account is 100 per cent clean before it settles.”

This proactive stance could make Codex an attractive partner for regulators, though it may face resistance from users accustomed to the less stringent norms of DeFi.

With an ambitious roadmap that includes instant fiat settlement (T+0) and support for regional stablecoins, Codex aims to capture a quarter of corporate stablecoin flows in Africa within the following year.

“We are not here to attract noise,” says Ajetomobi. “Our goal is to bring in names that matter and to handle huge volumes.”

If Codex succeeds, it could lay the groundwork for a truly unified African payment system, transforming everything from trade to remittances. The journey is beginning, but for a continent long held back by financial borders, a stablecoin-only highway might be the breakthrough it has been waiting for.

The development of a seamless, stablecoin-based settlement layer like the one Codex is building could be a game-changer for the tourism and travel sectors in Nigeria and across Africa. The current financial friction in cross-border payments creates significant barriers for both tourists and industry operators. Here’s how this technology could impact the sector:

Tourists visiting Nigeria from other African countries or abroad often face challenges with currency conversion, high transaction fees from card payments, and the risks of carrying large amounts of cash. A stablecoin-based system would allow them to pay for hotels, tours, flights, and local services instantly using a digital wallet. This simplifies budgeting and makes transactions more secure and transparent, enhancing the overall travel experience.

Nigerian hotels, tour operators, and travel agencies often wait days or weeks for international payments to clear through traditional banking systems, which also deduct significant fees. With a stablecoin settlement layer, a tour operator in Lagos could receive payment from a client in Kenya or the United States in minutes, not days. This significantly improves cash flow, reduces operational costs, and enables more competitive pricing.

The African tourism ecosystem involves complex B2B transactions. For example, a Nigerian travel agency might need to pay a hotel in Ghana, a safari guide in Kenya, and a transportation service in South Africa for a multi-destination tour package. A stablecoin rail would unify these payments, eliminating the need to navigate multiple currency conversions and banking systems, thereby fostering greater collaboration and making it easier to create and sell pan-African tourism packages.

As global travel trends evolve, a growing segment of tourists—particularly younger demographics- are comfortable with and prefer digital and crypto-based payments. By adopting this technology, Nigeria’s tourism sector can position itself as modern and forward-thinking, attracting a tech-savvy clientele and potentially opening up new markets.

For an industry that relies on trust, blockchain-based payments offer a high degree of transparency and security. Both the payer and the receiver can verify transactions on an immutable ledger, reducing the risk of payment disputes and fraud. This stability could encourage more international travel companies to partner with Nigerian and African businesses.

In essence, by removing the financial borders that currently inhibit smooth transactions, a stablecoin-only settlement layer could unlock significant growth potential for Africa’s tourism industry, making it more efficient, accessible, and competitive on a global scale.

 

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FAQs

1. What is Codex?

Codex is a Layer 2 blockchain built on Optimism, designed exclusively for stablecoin transactions. Its goal is to create a fast, cheap, and reliable settlement layer for cross-border payments, with a strong focus on the African market.

2. How is Codex different from other blockchains like Ethereum or Solana?

Unlike general-purpose blockchains that support thousands of different tokens and applications, Codex is specialised. It only supports fiat-backed stablecoins (like USDC, USDT, and soon cNGN), which allows it to optimise for payment-specific functions like speed, low fees, and built-in compliance checks.

3. What problem is Codex trying to solve in Africa?

Codex aims to solve the problem of slow, expensive, and unreliable cross-border payments in Africa. By creating a unified platform where different stablecoins are interchangeable, it eliminates the inefficiencies and price differences that currently exist when moving money between African countries.

5. Why doesn’t Codex support algorithmic stablecoins?

Codex has a strict policy of only listing fiat-backed stablecoins because they are backed by real-world currency reserves, making them more stable and secure. The company avoids algorithmic stablecoins due to the high risks associated with them, as demonstrated by the collapse of Terra/UST in 2022.

6. How can a business in Nigeria use Codex?

A Nigerian business, such as a fintech or remittance company, can partner with Codex to use its infrastructure for settling cross-border transactions. They can hold a single balance on Codex and instantly send or receive payments in various stablecoins across different blockchains, with all transaction fees paid in USDC for simplified accounting.