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Stablecoins Aug 12, 2024

No Global Trade Without Africa

Discover how Africa fuels global trade and why Zynta’s stablecoin infrastructure is replacing slow legacy systems to enable instant Africa-EU payment settlement.

Zynta blog header — No Global Trade Without Africa — Africa's role in international trade and payments
Africa is not a future player in global trade because it’s already a central one.
 
From raw materials to agricultural exports, from growing manufacturing hubs to technology-enabled services, Africa’s output fuels industries across the EU and beyond but it rarely gets recognition for doing so.
 
The challenge, perhaps, is not about moving goods and instead it’s moving money. Payments between Africa and the rest of the world still operate on rails designed decades ago.
 
They’re slow, expensive and risky due to currency swings and geopolitical volatility.
 
Stablecoins can change that. They can turn settlement from a multi-day, high-cost process into an instant and predictable payment system, and Zynta wants to capture that in the Africa–EU corridor.
 

Let’s Paint the Picture and Frame It 🖌️

How can one boldly claim that Africa is the centre of global trade? Let’s find out:
  • The EU is Africa’s largest trading partner, with €467.2 billion in goods and services exchanged in 2023, including €366.4 billion in goods and €100.8 billion in services.
  • Africa supplies a large share of the world’s cocoa, rare earth minerals and energy resources, all essential to European manufacturing and technology.
  • Service exports from Africa, including fintech, software and creative industries, are growing quickly.
Beyond trade volume, Africa’s economic influence comes from resources that no other continent can match:
  • 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves are in Africa, including cobalt, lithium, nickel and rare earth elements.
  • The Democratic Republic of the Congo alone produces 70% of the world’s mined cobalt: a key input for electric vehicle and smartphone batteries.
  • Africa holds: – 47% of global cobalt reserves – 85% of manganese reserves – 40 %of the world’s gold – 90% of its chromium and platinum – 65% of global arable land and 10% of renewable freshwater resources
Yet the flow of goods and the flow of money doesn’t always match.
 
A physical shipment may take a week. Payment settlement often takes longer. They say, “Doing business in Africa takes too long; too many delays, too many middlemen and we can’t ignore the level of corruption that takes place.”
 
Traditional systems like SWIFT (a global messaging network banks use to send payment instructions) require multiple intermediaries, adding 2-5 days to transactions and removing between 4-5% of value through fees and poor exchange rates. For African exporters and European importers, this means lost profit, delayed cash flow and higher risk.
 
The result is reduced trust, lower trade volumes and slower growth.
 
The solution? Stablecoins, of course!
 

Stablecoins: The Frame of the Big Picture 🖼️

Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to stable currencies such as the US dollar.
 
The main benefit is not speculation, but operational efficiency. We’ve seen the benefits of stablecoins:
 
  • Transfers clear in seconds instead of days
  • Real-time exchange rates are applied without slippage
  • Fewer intermediaries are needed
  • Costs drop to a fraction of SWIFT-based transfers
 
Always on, programmable and without borders. It’s no surprise how and why stablecoins found PMF (product market fit) so quickly.
For businesses, this is the difference between an exporter in Ghana receiving stablecoins in under a minute, converting to Cedi instantly and using the funds the same day. That’s why we believe in what we do at Zynta.
 

Zynta as the Gallery? 🤯

 
Zynta does not simply use stablecoins. It builds the infrastructure around them. The same way many artists can paint a thousand paintings, they all need a place to uphold their value and a place for them to be kept, sold, and exchanged.
That’s what Zynta does. For enterprises:
  • Real-time stablecoin settlement in 60 seconds
  • Up to 2 million US dollars in daily limits
  • Euro, US dollar and regional stablecoin wallets
  • Regulatory-grade compliance under an EU VASP licence, with Nigerian and North American licences in progress
For individuals:
  • Cross-border payments to more than 50 countries
  • 0.5 per cent fees, real-time FX
  • Access via web or WhatsApp
  • KYC approval within two hours
By embedding stablecoin rails into high-volume Africa–EU payment flows, Zynta makes payment settlement a background process. Like the lighting and curation in a gallery that allows the art to be appreciated without distraction.
 
The big picture is Africa’s role in global trade.
 
The frame is stablecoins.
The structure that supports and shapes how that picture is presented to the world.
 
The gallery is Zynta, providing the infrastructure that makes the frame secure, the picture visible, and the experience seamless.
 
But even better, this gallery will be open 24/7.

Looking to explore how this could work for your business?

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FAQ

Transfers between Zynta users are free. For external transfers, we charge a flat 0.5% fee with no hidden costs. This is significantly lower than traditional banks and money transfer services that often charge 3-6% through hidden fees and poor exchange rates.

Transfers between Zynta users are free. For external transfers, we charge a flat 0.5% fee with no hidden costs. This is significantly lower than traditional banks and money transfer services that often charge 3-6% through hidden fees and poor exchange rates.

Transfers between Zynta users are free. For external transfers, we charge a flat 0.5% fee with no hidden costs. This is significantly lower than traditional banks and money transfer services that often charge 3-6% through hidden fees and poor exchange rates.

Transfers between Zynta users are free. For external transfers, we charge a flat 0.5% fee with no hidden costs. This is significantly lower than traditional banks and money transfer services that often charge 3-6% through hidden fees and poor exchange rates.

Transfers between Zynta users are free. For external transfers, we charge a flat 0.5% fee with no hidden costs. This is significantly lower than traditional banks and money transfer services that often charge 3-6% through hidden fees and poor exchange rates.

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