Visa Tests Stablecoin Transfers With M-Pesa in DRC

Visa, mobile money operator M-Pesa, and African payments network Onafriq have launched a pilot in the Democratic Republic of Congo that settles cross-border mobile transactions using U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins, according to the firms. The program runs on Visa's tokenized-asset platform and uses USD Coin (USDC) on the Stellar blockchain.

The stablecoin layer is invisible to the end user. A person receiving money from abroad or topping up a wallet through a foreign source still sees the transaction in the familiar M-Pesa interface. The stablecoin replaces the SWIFT-dependent chain of intermediary banks on the back end. Visa said settlement can happen in under a minute instead of the typical one-to-three days.

Cost is the explicit target. The World Bank estimates that sending money across borders in Sub-Saharan Africa costs an average of nearly 8% of the transfer amount, the highest of any corridor. SWIFT-based rails take time and fees through multiple correspondent banks. Blockchain settlement eliminates most of those hops. Visa did not disclose the specific fee reduction the pilot targets, comparable stablecoin corridors in Nigeria and Ghana have cut total costs below 3%.

The DRC is a logical test site. Mobile money adoption there has climbed roughly 40% annually over the past three years, according to GSMA estimates, in an economy where traditional banking reaches only about 15% of the adult population. The Central Bank of Congo has also been trying to reduce dollarization of the local economy, which creates a regulatory tension the stablecoin pilot does not address. A digital U.S. dollar rails system could entrench the very currency substitution the central bank is trying to reverse.

The pilot follows Visa's broader stablecoin push. The company partnered earlier this year with Africa-focused crypto exchange Yellow Card to explore treasury operations and cross-currency settlement for corporate clients. It has also tested stablecoin settlement with Worldpay and Nuvei on the Solana blockchain.

Mastercard, which carries an Alpha Score of 74 on AlphaScala's proprietary risk model, is pursuing a different approach in Kenya. Through a separate arrangement with Safaricom, Mastercard is working on improved payment acceptance and remittance infrastructure that does not use stablecoins. That initiative covers over 636,000 merchants and focuses on traditional card rails.

For now the DRC pilot is limited in scope. Visa and Onafriq said they will measure transaction speed, reliability, and the stability of the settlement cycle before deciding on a wider rollout. Success would likely push the same model into other M-Pesa markets across East and West Africa. A failure, or any disruption in the USDC-Stellar peg during settlement, would set back that timeline and hand ammunition to central bankers who view stablecoins as a currency-sovereignty risk.

The firms gave no target date for expansion.