Fintech · Industry brief

""

Nium launched a new service enabling businesses to fund cross-border payouts using USDC stablecoin, converting it to USD upon deposit and paying out in local fiat currency across 190+ countries within seconds. The offering leverages Nium's existing infrastructure of 40+ global payment licenses and partnerships with regulated stablecoin providers, requiring no new client integrations or crypto custody management and eliminating traditional wire fees and pre-funding capital lock-up. The service is available now for eligible corporate clients through Nium's standard API with typical deployment in several days.

""

Ventures Platform closed its second Pan-African fund at $84 million in August 2026, exceeding its $75 million target with new limited partners including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Norfund alongside existing backers like the International Finance Corporation and Standard Bank. The oversubscribed close signals institutional confidence in the manager's track record deploying into companies like Moniepoint, PiggyVest, and Flutterwave, though it arrives amid a structural shift in African venture funding where equity-only VC deal volume fell 21 percent year over year to $2.1 billion in 2025 while debt capital hit record levels. African tech M&A reached 84 deals worth $11.4 billion in disclosed value by August 2026, already surpassing all of 2025's full-year count, driven partly by fintech listings including OPay's reportedly planned $4 billion US IPO and PalmPay's pursuit of a $1 billion-plus Hong Kong listing. Currency depreciation, limited local exit venues, and regulatory uncertainty remain structural risks for African venture funds, as portfolio companies earning revenue in local currencies face translation losses while exits require targeting offshore markets with deeper capital pools.