Every great business starts with a simple idea. For a new financial technology (fintech) company called Stabyl, that idea did not come out of a formal corporate boardroom. Instead, it started during casual conversations between classmates at the University of Oxford. Between 2021 and 2022, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh and Zachary Schwartzman were studying for their Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees. During their time together, they spent hours talking about the future of digital finance. They specifically focused on how new digital currencies, known as stablecoins, could solve one of the biggest and most painful financial headaches in Africa: foreign exchange (FX) trading.
Today, those school conversations have turned into a real, high-profile business. Stabyl has officially come out of hiding (stealth mode) and announced that it has raised $2.7 million in pre-seed funding. The investment round was led by Konga, one of Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce and retail giants. With this fresh capital, the startup is setting out to build a powerful, institutional-grade foreign exchange infrastructure. This technical system is designed to make it much easier for companies to access cash in different currencies and speed up how transactions are settled across African markets.
To turn their university ideas into a functional reality, Ekeh and Schwartzman knew they needed top-tier technical expertise. They teamed up with Michael Anyi, a highly experienced software engineer with a decade of history building secure financial systems. Together, the three co-founders form a powerful blend of business knowledge, local market experience, and deep technical skill.
Prince Nnamdi Ekeh is a well-known name in the African business space. He is the former Co-CEO of the Konga Group and has played a massive role in growing Nigeria’s digital trade ecosystem. His co-founder, Zachary Schwartzman, brings an international financial perspective to the table, having previously worked as a Wall Street analyst. By combining their strengths with Anyi’s engineering background, the team is uniquely positioned to handle the messy, fragmented nature of Africa’s current currency networks.
To understand why Stabyl is so important, it helps to look at the massive problems currently plaguing African businesses. Right now, foreign exchange in Africa is incredibly fragmented. When a large company, a bank, or a payment platform wants to swap one currency for another—such as turning Nigerian Naira into US Dollars—the process is surprisingly old-fashioned and slow.
Even though money is moving through the continent at record speeds—for example, Nigeria saw a massive $6.92 billion in net foreign exchange inflows in February 2026 alone—the underlying tools used to trade that money are outdated.
Right now, if a large financial company wants to buy US Dollars, its treasury team has to manually call or message multiple banks and private currency providers. They have to ask each one, “What is your rate today?” and “How much cash do you have available?” This manual work creates severe issues:
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Massive Delays: It can take hours or even days to confirm a trade.
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Shifting Rates: Foreign exchange rates move constantly. By the time a company gets approval to make a trade, the price has often changed, forcing them to start the whole manual process over again or accept a worse deal.
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High Costs: Because there is no single marketplace, companies often pay bloated prices simply because they do not know who has the best rate at that exact moment.
Stabyl is not a consumer app. You cannot download it on your phone to send money to a family member. Instead, it is a hidden layer of technology that sits behind the scenes, serving banks, payment service providers (PSPs), and major financial institutions.
Stabyl’s core solution is something called a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB). Think of it as a digital stock market, but specifically for African foreign exchange. Instead of making manual phone calls, any approved bank or payment company on Stabyl can log into the platform and instantly post an order saying exactly how much currency they want to buy or sell, and at what price.
The system automatically matches buyers and sellers in real time.
“That entire process of having to make calls, hold transactions, figure out rates, and do all this manual labor is completely removed,” Michael Anyi explained in a recent interview. “Everybody on Stabyl can create a transaction, and that transaction gets matched and queued immediately.”
By pooling cash and liquidity from many different participating institutions, Stabyl ensures there is a steady supply of currency available. To keep the market stable even when sudden shocks happen or demand jumps unexpectedly, Stabyl also maintains its own back-up reserves through partnerships with selected financial institutions.
One of the most innovative things about Stabyl is how it handles the actual payout of trades, a process known as settlement. The company bridges two completely different worlds: traditional banking systems (fiat money) and modern blockchain networks.
When a financial company completes an FX trade on Stabyl, the settlement can happen across both rails:
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Traditional Cash (Fiat): For trades involving the Nigerian Naira, Stabyl has partnered with KongaPay (Konga’s official payment wing) to handle local currency movements safely and legally.
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Digital Assets (Stablecoins): For digital dollar settlements, the platform uses secure stablecoins like USDT (Tether) and USDC (USD Coin). The backend security for these digital assets is powered by DFNS, a world-class wallet infrastructure provider that uses advanced cryptography to protect funds.
Stabyl emphasizes that its system is completely blockchain-agnostic. This means they are not loyal to just one crypto network. Instead, the software automatically picks whichever blockchain is fastest, cheapest, and safest based on what the client needs at that exact moment.
As Prince Nnamdi Ekeh points out, you cannot fix African FX by ignoring traditional money. “Stabyl is connecting stablecoin rails with fiat banking rails because you cannot separate the two,” Ekeh stated. “Stablecoins are great, but they are not great on their own. You still need to convert back to local currency.”
Traditional foreign exchange companies and banks usually make their money through something called the “spread.” This means they buy a currency at a low price and sell it to you at a much higher price, pocketing the difference. This business model often hidden-charges users and makes trades more expensive for everyone.
Stabyl is doing things differently. They do not hold currency inventory to profit off price differences. Instead, they operate on a transparent, volume-based model. They charge a very low, flat transaction fee (a take rate) every time a trade is successfully matched on their system.
By keeping costs low, Stabyl encourages companies to route higher amounts of volume through their platform. Co-founder Zachary Schwartzman stressed that their goal is not to steal market share from existing payment firms, but to help them. By acting as an open utility layer, they want to make the entire financial ecosystem more efficient. “We’re creating more dough to make this a bigger pie for everyone,” Schwartzman explained.
| Feature | Traditional African FX Operators | Stabyl Infrastructure Platform |
| How Trades Are Made | Manual phone calls, emails, and separate negotiations. | Automated matching via a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB). |
| How They Make Money | High currency spreads (buying low, selling high). | Low, flat transaction fees per trade (take rate). |
| Settlement Speeds | Often takes hours or days due to bank delays. | Nearly instant via integrated fiat and stablecoin rails. |
| Target Audience | Everyday consumers and individual businesses. | Banks, Payment Service Providers (PSPs), and large institutions. |
The launch of Stabyl comes at a highly strategic moment. For a long time, African regulators were deeply suspicious of digital currencies and crypto technology. However, the regulatory environment in Nigeria has taken a very positive turn over the last few years.
The big shift began in late 2023 when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) lifted its long-standing ban on banks working with crypto companies. Following that, Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) created formal registration and incubation programs to bring digital asset providers into a clear, legal framework.
Because Stabyl is designed from the ground up to be fully compliant with local laws, it is entering the market with strong regulatory tailwinds. It is positioning itself as a trusted, official foundation for the next generation of financial networks on the continent.
Stabyl’s very first large-scale real-world test is happening directly through its lead investor, Konga. This partnership makes perfect sense for both sides. Konga is an e-commerce giant that handles millions of product movements, many of which rely heavily on cross-border supply chains and international payments.
For Konga to grow across the continent, it needs access to smooth, uninterrupted foreign currency. “Konga’s vision is to be the engine of trade and commerce in Africa, and foreign exchange liquidity is the fuel that powers that engine,” Ekeh noted. “Stabyl’s infrastructure is critical to bring Konga’s vision to reality.”
While the startup is initially focusing all of its energy on perfecting the Naira-to-US Dollar (NGN/USD) trading corridor, its ultimate goals are much larger. As the company secures more regulatory licenses and approvals across borders, it plans to expand into other major African currency pairs (such as the Ghanaian Cedi, Kenyan Shilling, and South African Rand).
Armed with millions in fresh capital, a powerful corporate ally in Konga, and a clear technological edge, Stabyl is setting out to do something grand. It doesn’t just want to participate in the African foreign exchange market; it wants to rebuild the very tracks on which the continent’s entire commercial economy runs.
