Nigerian fintech company Daya has partnered with the Aptos Foundation and Dubai-based crypto exchange HashKey MENA. Together, they are launching a new digital payment highway to make sending money between Africa and the Middle East much easier.
Pan-African stablecoin payments platform Daya has entered into a landmark strategic partnership with the Aptos Foundation and Dubai-based virtual asset exchange HashKey MENA. Together, the entities have launched a regulated, business-to-business (B2B) stablecoin payment corridor pilot designed to bridge the financial gap between Africa and the Middle East.
Settled natively on the Aptos Layer 1 blockchain, the initiative aims to dismantle the long-standing frictions associated with traditional cross-border trade, including exorbitant fees, heavy foreign exchange (FX) friction, and sluggish settlement timelines.
Redefining B2B Trade Settlement
Cross-border commerce between the Middle East and Africa represents one of the world’s fastest-growing economic corridors. However, traditional banking infrastructures reliant on complex SWIFT networks and a daisy chain of intermediary banks often delay transactions by 3 to 5 business days and drain capital through hidden currency-conversion margins.
The newly formed partnership addresses enterprise-level friction by establishing an efficient, compliant digital dollar highway. The operational framework leverages the unique strengths of each partner:
• HashKey MENA (The Middle Eastern Node): Fully licensed by Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), HashKey provides compliant fiat-to-stablecoin gateways for United Arab Emirates Dirhams (AED), US Dollars (USD), and other major currencies.
• Daya (The African Node): Serving as the local payment infrastructure anchor, Daya utilizes its proprietary smart routing engine to maximize liquidity across African markets. It provides secure on- and off-ramps for the Nigerian Naira and additional regional currencies.
• Aptos Foundation (The Network Layer): The pilot executes transactions via the Aptos blockchain. Known for high throughput, institutional security, and predictable low costs, Aptos acts as the underlying rails for near-instantaneous financial settlement.
The B2B corridor operates as a two-phase rollout targeted at multinational corporations and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs).
In the initial phase, a corporate entity can initiate a cross-border transfer by funding a transaction in local fiat (such as the Nigerian Naira) via Daya’s infrastructure. The smart routing engine automatically converts the fiat into a regulated stablecoin, transmits the asset across the Aptos blockchain, and off-ramps it directly into local fiat (such as the UAE Dirham) on the HashKey MENA platform in Dubai.
By providing access to virtual local-currency accounts, payment APIs, and traditional SWIFT capabilities simultaneously, the network allows enterprises to transition fluidly between legacy banking and digital assets.
While stablecoins have found massive organic adoption among retail users across Africa as a hedge against local currency devaluation, institutional and corporate adoption has historically been bottlenecked by compliance and regulatory uncertainty.
The Daya, Aptos, and HashKey MENA initiative directly counters this challenge by operating entirely within robust regulatory parameters. By utilizing VARA-compliant infrastructure in Dubai and licensed payment rails in Africa, the pilot ensures rigorous due diligence, full transaction transparency, and strict adherence to anti-money laundering (AML) standards.
Furthermore, this pilot integrates Africa directly into HashKey’s broader Asia Connect network, which already links major digital asset settlement nodes across Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the UAE. By opening up an official African node, businesses on the continent are no longer isolated from global financial hubs, unlocking a more connected, cost-competitive, and borderless trade ecosystem.
