A Kenyan fintech company, HoneyCoin, raised $4.9 million in seed money to enter new markets in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The company is developing payment rails powered by stablecoin.
Visa Ventures, Visa’s investment arm, TLcom Capital, Lava, Musha Ventures, 4DX Ventures, Antler, and Stellar Development Foundation all participated in the equity round, which was led by Flourish Ventures.
HoneyCoin’s ambitious commitment
The Nairobi-based startup is betting that its blockchain-powered settlement rails will be able to capture a piece of Africa’s $329 billion cross-border payments market, which is characterised by high fees and settlement delays.
Through direct connections to banks, mobile money networks, and international payment partners, HoneyCoin’s stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure allows businesses to transfer money in hours rather than days at a fraction of the usual costs.
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“We have unlimited runway, we’re profitable and have been for the past 2 years,” said David Nandwa, founder and CEO of HoneyCoin.
“Our mission is to build the operating system for money; how it’s moved, held, and collected, regardless of medium or geography—just like Apple redefined computing. This raise enables us to lead that transformation, across Africa and other global markets.”
HoneyCoin’s significant milestone
According to the fintech, it serves 326,000 direct consumers and 350 enterprise clients, processing $150 million in monthly transactions.
Its B2B settlement and acquisition services account for most of its revenue; corporate clients can pay up to $2,500 monthly to integrate its payments API.
HoneyCoin, which was founded in 2020, is active in the US, several emerging markets, parts of Europe, and 15 African nations.
Crunchbase reports that with the additional funding, the company has raised just over $5 million, including previous support from Flourish in 2021 and 2022.
The business claims to have been profitable for the past two years and plans to use the money to expand into Mozambique, Zambia, Rwanda, Francophone Africa, Latin America, and Asia, hire senior executives, and obtain additional licenses.
HoneyCoin’s infrastructure uses stablecoins to reduce cross-border settlement times.
Nandwa claims that HoneyCoin’s infrastructure uses stablecoins to reduce cross-border settlement times from days to hours, settling transactions the same day.
“We’ve built a proprietary, stablecoin-powered AI Matching Engine that uses the customer and volume data we have to net off flows across both sides,” Nandwa explained.
“We have also built a global colocation network of strategic banks that powers our near-instant to same-day settlements.”
The startup reports that while consumer activity through its Peer app is increasing by five per cent per month, its B2B volumes are increasing by 16 per cent per month. A little over 60 per cent of transactions are domestic B2B transactions.
In addition to having a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license in Europe and Money Service Business (MSB) and Payment Service Solutions Provider (PSSP) permits in Canada, HoneyCoin also has MSB approval in the US.
It has established direct partnerships with mobile network operators and payment service providers (PSPs) in Africa and received Letters of No Objection (LNOs) from Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria regulators.
HoneyCoin to introduce new products in Q3 2025 for African markets
To broaden its technology and service offerings to businesses and consumers, it intends to introduce several new products in Q3 2025.
These include a software point-of-sale (POS) solution for East Africa, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) product in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania, a cross-border liquidity solution for African corporates with Interswitch, and a stablecoin-backed debit card with Visa.
“[HoneyCoin] has the chance to cement itself as the go-to infrastructure layer for collecting, converting, and settling funds in any currency across B2B cross-border payments into and within Africa,” said Efayomi Carr, principal at Flourish Ventures.
“The capital will strengthen core infrastructure, deepen bank and regulator relationships, and add senior talent to serve larger enterprise clients.”
Nandwa sees HoneyCoin competing with international and African fintechs, including VertoFX, Nala, Yellow Card, and Cellulant, that are developing cross-border payment systems for African markets.