Esca Finance, a Nigerian-founded foreign exchange and treasury management startup, has partnered with MANSA, a stablecoin settlement platform backed by Tether, to enable same-day cross-border payments across key African markets. The collaboration links Esca's local banking relationships and payout infrastructure with MANSA's USDT-based settlement rails, allowing remittance providers and payment companies to complete transactions in Nigeria, Ghana, and Francophone West and Central Africa without pre-funding accounts in each country. This reduces the need for businesses to tie up capital in multiple jurisdictions, a common hurdle in expanding across Africa's fragmented financial landscape. By using stablecoin liquidity at the point of transaction, the system bypasses traditional correspondent banking delays, which often stretch settlement times to several days. Esca said same-day settlements via MANSA's network are expected to make up 10%–20% of its monthly transaction volume within the next year. The startup, founded in 2023, handles between $75 million and $120 million in monthly payments and counts MoneyGram and Bridge, Stripe's stablecoin infrastructure arm, among its clients. The partnership supports Esca's expansion into the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), where it is already operational in Burundi, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. New markets, including Seychelles and Djibouti, are targeted for entry in 2026. "MANSA's settlement-first USDT rails have strengthened our ability to deliver same-day settlements across key African corridors, helping Esca scale more efficiently with tier-one remittance players," said Shalom Osiadi, chief executive officer of Esca Finance. Mouloukou Sanoh, chief executive officer and co-founder of MANSA, said Esca's local execution capabilities complement MANSA's settlement layer, with initial focus on overlapping operational markets.
Esca Finance is relying on stablecoin infrastructure to solve a problem created by the very banking inefficiencies it was built to navigate. The fact that 10%–20% of its monthly volume is expected to shift to USDT settlements within a year shows how conventional African banking rails are failing remittance and payment firms. For Nigerian fintechs, this reinforces a growing dependency on dollar-pegged digital assets rather than domestic financial reform. If stablecoins are now the fastest path to same-day settlement, the real story is the banking system's stagnation.
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