The stablecoin payment strategy Flutterwave built

Mercy Emmanuel, Flutterwave’s Stablecoin Vertical Lead, has a simple way of explaining the payment company’s approach to stablecoins: the stablecoin is the rail, not the product.

It is a principle that has guided Flutterwave’s stablecoin push since 2025—though the company’s internal appreciation for the technology started much earlier. Flutterwave is using stablecoins to move money through the payments infrastructure it has spent a decade building.

Stablecoins are digital currencies built on blockchain technology and designed to maintain a stable value, often by being pegged to a real-world currency such as the US dollar. USDC, issued by NYSE-listed company Circle, is an example of a dollar-backed stablecoin.

Open Flutterwave’s consumer-facing remittance app, Send App, or Flutterwave for Business (F4B), which targets merchants and business owners, and there is little visible sign of the blockchain underneath. A customer can send money to Nigeria or Ghana without choosing a network or managing a cryptocurrency wallet. A business can hold stablecoin balances alongside fiat balances.

Even Flutterwave’s sales and onboarding teams now pitch (stablecoin) payments that settle in minutes and the ability to hold stablecoin balances to merchants.

The build-up took five years. Flutterwave began exploring USDC for Africa–Europe remittances in October 2021 through an integration with US-based blockchain network Stellar.

By April 2025, it had joined Circle Payments Network (CPN), the stablecoin settlement programme run by the US-based issuer, as a design partner, one of the earliest African fintechs to do so, becoming a part of Circle’s settlement system for banks, payment firms, and virtual asset service providers. By October of the same year, Polygon became its default blockchain for cross-border stablecoin transfers.

Yet, Flutterwave is not trying to build another crypto app.

Its pitch is closer to this: a merchant should be able to accept payment in dollars, naira, or USDC without needing to understand the differences among them. A consumer should be able to send money without having to choose a blockchain or burden themselves with that choice. Behind the interface, however, Flutterwave has to decide which asset moves the money, on which network, through which wallet, at what cost, with what liquidity, and when to convert it back to fiat.

That is an orchestration business.

Flutterwave has spent the past 10 years building this kind of infrastructure for traditional payments. Its platform connects banks, cards, mobile money networks, and other local payment systems, so businesses do not have to integrate with each one separately. Stablecoins add another set of rails to the same payment ideology.

Magic money?

Stablecoins have been around for the past decade. In their early days, they were a nifty tool for crypto traders who moved in and out of cryptocurrency trades, biding their time to go long or short. Around mid-2024, the Internet—especially global payment institutions—went gung ho about stablecoins’ unintentional capabilities for… checks notes… speed and lower costs. Suddenly, stablecoins weren’t only useful for crypto traders. Companies, banks, and fintechs were looking at them as a faster, cheaper way to move money across borders.

African payment companies are beginning to back existing products with stablecoins without asking customers to become crypto users. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Visa, the global payments giant, is piloting stablecoin settlement for cross-border mobile wallet top-ups via M-Pesa, in partnership with Onafriq, the pan-African payments infrastructure provider. In June, Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s Senior Vice President and Head of Solutions, said stablecoins settle transactions in the background while customers continue to top up and use their wallets as usual.

Visa estimated that global stablecoin supply grew from $186 billion in December 2024 to $274 billion a year later, while adjusted transaction volume was on track to exceed $10 trillion in 2025. Its latest on-chain data puts circulating supply above $275 billion and adjusted transaction volume at $15 trillion over the past 12 months.

The important shift is not simply that there is more activity in stablecoins. Financial companies are beginning to work out where they fit into the stack.

Flutterwave appears to have made an early decision. It does not need to issue the dominant stablecoin, own or integrate the dominant blockchain, or persuade businesses to adopt crypto. Its opportunity is to make several different forms of digital money usable inside the payment system it already operates, which is also potentially a much bigger—or at least much more useful—business.

Beyond the obvious choice and the fluidity of money movement that attract Flutterwave, stablecoins could give the company a way to make its existing payment volume cheaper and easier to settle.

Flutterwave has processed over $40 billion in payments since 2016. Even a small reduction in the cost of settling that volume could matter at scale.

If stablecoins can reduce the cost and time of moving some of that money across borders, it could make it easier for Flutterwave to win business from companies that currently struggle to move money between African markets, turning stablecoins from a new product into a way to grow the core business. That logic improves the economics of a payments business that already handles billions of dollars.

The plumbing is becoming the product

Consider a business receiving $100,000 from an overseas customer.

In the old system, a payment company might receive the money through a bank, move it through a correspondent network, convert currencies, reconcile the transaction, and eventually pay the business in its local currency.

A stablecoin rail can shorten the settlement leg. The value can move continuously as dollar-backed stablecoins, such as USDC, USDT, or RLUSD, on a blockchain before being converted into local currency at the destination.

The blockchain transfer is the easy part. The difficult part is everything else around it.

A payment company still needs to know where the stablecoin should come from, which blockchain to use, whether there is enough liquidity on the other end, whether the recipient can be paid in local currency, what foreign exchange (FX) rate applies, how the transaction is screened, how it is reconciled against the customer’s account, and what happens if the chosen blockchain or liquidity route fails.

That is where the opportunity for an established fintech becomes interesting.

A company that already sits between businesses, banks, and payment networks has something a blockchain-native company does not: a large installed base of customers and relationships with the financial system on both sides of the transaction; Flutterwave’s participation in CPN sweetens that access, combined with liquidity providers—such as its strategic investors Ripple and Circle—and counterparties that want regulated access to African payment corridors.

It gives the company a seat at the table in Circle’s effort to make USDC a settlement asset for regulated financial institutions, while Flutterwave supplies what Circle itself lacks: local collection methods, payout rails, compliance operations, licences, and merchant relationships across African markets.

Yet, Flutterwave’s product architecture suggests Flutterwave does not intend to be tied to Circle alone. Its stablecoin stack supports USDC across Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Polygon; USDT across Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon; and RLUSD on Ethereum, according to its documentation—underscoring a multi-rail settlement strategy that combines fit-for-purpose blockchain infrastructure with assets that crypto-native users already prefer.

In Flutterwave’s world, Circle’s USDC and Ripple’s RLUSD compete for the same dollar-stablecoin market. Most payment companies pick a side. Flutterwave built its infrastructure to be indifferent to who wins. If a customer’s money moves faster through RLUSD in one corridor and through USDC in another, Emmanuel said the company’s multi-rail strategy just picks whichever asset does the job—not whichever issuer it prefers.

CPN gives that indifference somewhere to plug in. The network has two roles: an Originating Financial Institution converts the sender’s local currency into stablecoins, while a Beneficiary Financial Institution converts those stablecoins back into local currency at the other end.

Flutterwave can play either role, sourcing stablecoin liquidity when and where it is needed rather than parking money in local bank accounts (prefunding) across every market it serves. Payment companies call this trapped capital: money sitting idle in another country, waiting for a transaction that may never happen. For a company moving billions of dollars, its dog in the fight is getting that money unstuck.

Division of labour

Beyond Circle and Ripple, Flutterwave has more friends in this journey. In January, Flutterwave partnered with Nuvion and Turnkey. Both companies sit underneath Flutterwave.

Nuvion provides the global banking infrastructure, including multi-currency accounts, international payment rails, global payouts, stablecoin connectivity, foreign exchange, and settlement infrastructure. Flutterwave brings the other half: its merchant base, local collection and payout rails, licences, compliance operations, and relationships across African markets. Nuvion handles the global side; Flutterwave handles the African side.

With that partnership, a business could receive $100,000 via bank transfer, stablecoin, or another payment rail into its Nuvion-provided account. It could then move that money out through a stablecoin, a global payout, or a local African payment network. Nuvion provides those underlying options and the connections between them. Flutterwave decides how those options work within its product, what the customer sees, how transactions are priced and routed, and how the business is supported.

I think this is the more interesting part of the partnership. Flutterwave does not have to become a bank, wallet provider, FX desk, stablecoin issuer, and blockchain infrastructure company all at once. Nuvion already connects those pieces. Flutterwave can focus on what it knows best: turning that underlying complexity into a payment product that African businesses can actually use.

The split explains how and where orchestration happens.

Turnkey handles the wallet infrastructure, giving Flutterwave the wallets needed to hold and move digital assets without having to build that layer itself, while Tempo supplies an additional settlement rail that those wallets use to move assets. Since June, Tempo has run alongside Polygon as a second blockchain option within Flutterwave’s stablecoin stack, powering Send App and Flutterwave for Business.

The point of running two chains rather than one is routing: a corridor’s requirements, a customer’s needs, or prevailing settlement conditions determine which rail a transaction takes, rather than forcing every payment through a single blockchain by default.

What Flutterwave won’t outsource

Despite the growing list of partners, Flutterwave draws a hard line around what it builds itself. Anything touching the customer experience stays in-house: orchestration logic, compliance decisions, and how transactions are designed and reported, Emmanuel told me.

Customers are ultimately buying Flutterwave’s ability to make all those moving parts work as one, not any single partner’s technology.

The partners handle the pieces underneath. Turnkey secures the wallets. Nuvion connects fiat and stablecoin rails. Polygon carries the transactions. Circle and Ripple provide stablecoin liquidity and issuance. Flutterwave retains control over customer acquisition, product design, pricing, and its regulatory exposure—a heavier load than it sounds, since stablecoin infrastructure places a mainstream payment service provider like Flutterwave in the same conversation as licensed virtual asset service providers.

Given the heightened global interest in stablecoins, Flutterwave chose its timing impeccably. In March, it was part of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) pilot programme for anti-money-laundering supervision. The company has also applied for the second cohort of the central bank’s regulatory sandbox, Emmanuel told TechCabal, completing a 27-page form containing exactly 236 questions before the August 31 deadline.

It helps greatly that Nigeria’s regulators—and even regulators globally, including the United States—are beginning to recognise stablecoins’ role in the financial system. It creates a path of least resistance for Flutterwave—perhaps it is why it chose this moment to be very front and centre about stablecoins, after spending years appreciating the technology.

If stablecoins are the rail, orchestration is the oil, and Flutterwave is making specialised division of labour feel like the new engineering style to beat.

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