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Daya, a stablecoin-powered payments and banking platform founded by former Circle and Helicarrier executives, has secured $2.4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Hivemind Capital. The round also saw participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and Aptos Foundation.
Founded by Nigerian entrepreneurs Aleph L and Paul Joe, who previously launched Helicarrier, one of Africa’s earliest crypto exchange and stablecoin remittance platforms, the startup is building infrastructure to help African businesses manage increasingly global operations, it said Wednesday.
Many companies continue to patchwork banks, FX providers, payment processors, crypto services, and manual processes to manage cross-border transactions, which often results in high costs, settlement delays, limited visibility, and operational complexity.
Daya said it aims to solve these challenges through a unified platform that combines local fiat rails, stablecoin settlement, smart FX routing, treasury management, compliance workflows, and business reconciliation tools.
“Daya’s stablecoin-native architecture provides African businesses with the financial services they’ve long demanded: access to 24/7 global financial rails, instant settlement, and programmability at a fraction of the costs they incur today,” Kayla Phillips at Hivemind Capital, commented on the news. “Daya is the gateway for African businesses of all sizes to engage in the global dollar economy.”
Businesses can access virtual accounts in major currencies such as USD, HKD, and CNY, hold value in stablecoins, convert between local and global liquidity pools, and manage cross-border payments through a single interface, the company said. It also provides APIs that allow developers and fintech platforms to embed a programmable payment infrastructure into their products.
“The winners in this market will not just own the payment rails; they will own the workflows,” Joe stated. “That is why Daya is building both the application layer that companies use every day and the API layer that platform developers can build on top of. We want cross-border payments to feel like modern software: programmable, transparent, compliant, and fast.”
Investors see Daya as part of a continent-wide transformation in payments infrastructure. Growing regional trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area, increasing adoption of systems such as PAPSS, and the expanding use of stablecoins for cross-border commerce are creating demand for faster and more efficient settlement networks.
“Stablecoins are becoming essential infrastructure for businesses that operate across borders, but the real unlock comes when payments, FX, treasury, and reconciliation can move through one system,” Ash Pampati, Senior Vice President of Aptos Foundation, noted, adding that stablecoin-native infrastructure can provide businesses with low-cost access to global liquidity, real-time settlement, and programmable financial services.
The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand payment corridors, strengthen compliance and licensing capabilities, and deepen partnerships with local and global financial institutions.
Daya’s long-term vision is to become the financial operating system that enables African businesses to manage payments, treasury, foreign exchange, and settlement through a single, integrated platform.
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