Quidax stretches its stablecoin corridors across 21 countries
The exchange holding Nigeria's first provisional digital asset approval says businesses can now settle in 14 currencies across nine African markets and beyond, a bet that regulated rails can undercut some of the world's costliest payment corridors.
What happened
Quidax announced on 28 July that its stablecoin payment infrastructure now reaches more than 21 countries and 14 currencies. The corridors span nine African markets—Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire—plus destinations including Canada, China, the UAE, the UK and the US, with USDT, XAUT and USAT among the supported stablecoins and naira, cedi and CFA francs among the currencies. The company, which says it serves more than 5,000 startups and enterprises, cites cross-border fees costing Africa about $5bn a year and a Ghana-to-South Africa corridor that can cost up to 13% of a transaction.
Why it matters
Intra-African payments are among the most expensive in the world, and most stablecoin flow on the continent runs over informal or offshore rails. A Nigerian exchange inside the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulatory incubation programme building corridor infrastructure, as the Investments and Securities Act 2025 pulls digital assets inside the securities perimeter, is a test of whether compliance-first rails can compete on cost with both banks and the informal market—the same bet Mastercard and Yellow Card made across EEMEA in May. The XAUT and USAT listings also show Tether's newer instruments being distributed through African corridor infrastructure early.
What is not settled
The cost and coverage claims are the company's own: the $5bn fee figure and the 13% corridor cost appear in its release without a named source, and no volume figures accompany the expansion. The licence is less settled than the announcement implies. The release, which several outlets carried verbatim, describes Quidax as Nigeria's first SEC-licensed exchange, while the Commission's own register of fintech operators still lists Quidax Technologies Limited as a participant in its accelerated regulatory incubation programme, holding an approval-in-principle granted in August 2024 rather than a full registration. The release does not say which licences, if any, cover the non-Nigerian legs of these corridors, and regulatory treatment of stablecoin settlement differs sharply across the named markets—Kenya's new VASP regime, for one, splits supervision in ways the release does not engage.
Institutions in this story
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Quidax
Exchange
Says its stablecoin payment infrastructure now reaches more than 21 countries and 14 currencies, with nine African corridors at the centre of it; the licence behind the claim is an approval-in-principle rather than a full registration.
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Securities and Exchange Commission, Nigeria
Regulator
Granted Quidax an approval-in-principle as a digital assets exchange in August 2024 under its accelerated regulatory incubation programme, and still lists the firm as a participant in that programme rather than a fully registered operator.
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Tether
Issuer
Supplies three of the stablecoins carried on these corridors, USDT alongside the gold token XAUT and USAT, which puts its newer instruments into African corridor infrastructure early.
On the record
Quidax extends its stablecoin corridors to 21 countries
Quidax said on 28 July 2026 that its stablecoin payment infrastructure now reaches more than 21 countries and 14 currencies, with corridors across nine African markets including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Côte d'Ivoire alongside destinations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, China and the United Arab Emirates. USDT, XAUT and USAT are among the supported stablecoins. The company holds an approval-in-principle as a digital assets exchange from Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission rather than a full registration.