# Zynta nears close of funding round while building stablecoin rails across 20 African countries

Stableminded, a Stabledash show. Sep 3, 2026. Cairon Clarke.
https://live.stabledash.com/shows/stableminded/episodes/building-dollar-access-across-20-african-countries-on-vSwzZCl1-NU

Co-founder Cairon Clarke says regulation and relationships, not software, are what will protect a business that turns dollars into African currencies.

Zynta, which builds regulated stablecoin off-ramps that settle dollars into local currencies across 20 African countries, is very close to closing a fundraise, co-founder Cairon Clarke said. Since it was founded in 2024, the company has processed over $300M in stablecoin transactions with 100+ enterprises.

## A $300,000 pivot

Cairon Clarke built backend infrastructure for JPMorgan, Barclays and UBS before moving into crypto. His first ramp served retail users. Then a business needed to move $300,000 from Nigeria to the UK. Clarke says that one stablecoin transaction earned more in fees than the previous four or five months of micro transactions, so Zynta pivoted to businesses.

## The dollar access problem

Clarke says many African banking systems hold only local currency. He recalls asking a Nigerian bank to remit dollars from his account and being told to wait three, four days. In his view Africa skipped landlines and robust banking and went straight to mobile money, and stablecoins have accelerated dollarization. That puts governments in a balancing act, because they still want taxes paid in local currency. He says USD stablecoins take up 99.6% of global volume, while the Nigerian naira stablecoin cNGN does not have much volume.

## Licenses and bank partners

Zynta is licensed in Canada and is part of the first Nigerian cohort under the new regulation. Clarke says it is about to get licenses in Liberia and Senegal and has applied to sandboxes in Ghana and Zambia. It works with banks including UBA and Wema Bank, and over time it plans to own its own bank so it can capture deposits and manage liquidity.

The company also set up the African Virtual Assets Forum to drive stablecoin adoption and regulation. Its first event will be in Senegal, sponsored by Tether USDt issuer Tether and Solana Foundation.

## Product and expansion

Naira APIs are live, cedi support is in testing, and XOF and XAF are coming. Clarke says large banks in Mexico and Colombia are looking to integrate with Zynta, and the plan is to build regulated infrastructure in 20 African countries before moving to other emerging markets.

Clarke expects payment firms to eat into traditional bank fees, an opportunity he puts at 10, 20, 30x upside. He is betting that licenses and bank relationships, not technology, will hold that position for Zynta.

## Key takeaways

1. Cairon Clarke says Zynta is very close to closing a fundraise, which it plans to announce once it is done.
2. Zynta has processed over $300M in stablecoin transactions with 100+ enterprises and builds regulated off-ramps across 20 African countries.
3. Cairon Clarke argues that regulatory moats last 12 to 24, maybe 36 months, now that AI has worn down software advantages.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Dollar access and African off-ramps are the hard opportunity
- 1:24 Clarke's path from bank back-end work to contracting
- 6:30 From buying Ethereum to a $300K pivot
- 9:13 Nigerian roots revealed broken payments and leapfrog potential
- 15:16 Regulation and the AVAF forum form Zynta's moat
- 18:21 Four layers of payment infrastructure, ending in bank ownership
- 20:28 Stablecoins speed up dollarization and pressure governments
- 27:11 Zynta roadmap: currency APIs, AVAF distribution, funding round
- 29:26 With AI, regulation and relationships are the remaining moats

## Transcript

**Cairon Clarke** (0:00)

So I remember I'd always have to walk around with like bundles of cash because I didn't have a bank verification number so I couldn't open a bank account. US dollar stablecoins take up 99.6% of all volume globally. Everybody wants access to the dollar right now because it is the world's reserve currency. European payment infrastructure pretty much works. American payment infrastructure works quite well. So the opportunities now are in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

A lot of these countries don't necessarily have dollars in their banking system, so they only have access to local currency. Looking at stablecoins into Nigerian Naira, Ghana CDs, South African Rand, etc., all of the other African currencies, is the really hard bit because A, the liquidity can be difficult, B, you need to have very good banking relationships, and C, the off-ramp is just the hardest piece. And that's why we're building for that.

We have strong payment regulated infrastructure in 20 African countries because if you do hard things well, there's huge opportunity.

**Drew Rogers** (0:56)

Hey, it's Drew. Quick thank you to Altitude for making this episode possible. Altitude is rebuilding business banking for teams on the frontier. They offer the full stack for the modern CFO and founder, a beautifully designed platform for payouts, bill pay, corporate cards, enterprise controls, and so much more. Move money with speed, yield, and total control, all from your Stablecoin balance. Operate at Altitude. If your business is on the frontier, your finances should be too. You can learn more at altitude.xyz.

**Host** (1:24)

Welcome to the show, man. Welcome to Stableminded. We're so happy to have you on. Pumped to hear about Zynta, about all that you're building there, about your backstory. Sort of introduce it to our little corner of the world. Tell us a little bit. So I like to start with kind of the hero origin story. So you're building this. You've built and worked on a lot of things, but it seems like you were kind of a serial operator, working as a consultant with all kinds of different solutions.

What was sort of the origin of your career and like where you were starting, what you were learning along the way? And then take us up to the present moment.

**Cairon Clarke** (1:59)

Yeah 100% that's great and like really happy to be here. My villain story I guess. A

**Host** (2:03)

villain story, heck yeah I like it. We're

**Cairon Clarke** (2:05)

here to take over the world you know. Yeah okay very good. So the villain story is I started out after university and I went to go work at a company in the UK that basically did everything and I didn't realize this at the time but they built all the back-end infrastructure for pretty much every bank across the UK and Europe. They were called IFDS.

**Host** (2:22)

Sounds like a villain, huh?

**Cairon Clarke** (2:24)

Yeah. It literally sounds like a villain headquarters, right? And at the time, I worked with JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, everybody doing all their back-end infrastructure. And I was on a grad scheme. So I literally sat down after I completed university. And for the two weeks after, I applied to like 30 jobs a day. And within two weeks, I got my first

**Host** (2:45)

job,

**Cairon Clarke** (2:46)

right? While everybody else is like enjoying and holidaying and stuff. And then they were complaining to me afterwards, like, why don't I have a grad job? So I had this job started and you had four different roles. So you could come in, you could either be a business analyst, a project manager, a developer, or a tester. So I did one role for six months each over a two year period. And like Dev, you know, I did an engineering degree at university, but I hated coding. So I did that for a bit.

I was like, I don't want to do this no more.

**Host** (3:09)

Yeah.

**Cairon Clarke** (3:10)

Testing was like, cool. Again, I didn't want to do that. I was like, okay, either a project manager or a business analyst. And at the time, I kind of loved the analytical thinking behind being a business analyst. So I did that. And I worked with pretty much every bank at the time. Got a real understanding of like backend infrastructure. Yeah,

**Host** (3:24)

you had a laundry list of big logos.

**Cairon Clarke** (3:26)

Big logos, right? And then this is like the funniest story, right? I then went to go and work for a company called Investec, which is another bank. They had a bank asset manager side and a wealth manager side. I was working on the wealth manager front and I was brought in at the time I was like 24 to be this new consultant that was basically going to revolutionize the whole bank. They hadn't updated any infrastructure for the last 15 years or so.

When they needed to make a change in the system, the front office would call someone in tech. They'd be like, can you change it? They'd go make the change. No documentation, nothing. So I had to come in as this young 24-year-old guy that was basically revolutionizing the whole IT department. And obviously, you had a bunch of people there that literally did not want to change anything. A, for job protection, but B, also because I'm a young guy that's telling them how to do the job. They didn't like it.

And I was speaking to one of the lead devs there. And I said to him, this is what we need to do going forward. This is the structures, how things are going to work. And he started screaming at me in the office. He was like, I'm not listening to you. You don't have the experience. And I literally turned around. I looked at the IT director and the IT director kind of looked at me and he went back into his office. And this is like open plan office. Everyone's looked at me and like, yo, what's going on?

**Host** (4:33)

We love to the wolves.

**Cairon Clarke** (4:34)

Literally, literally thrown straight into the wolves. So I said to him, I don't want to argue

**Host** (4:38)

with

**Cairon Clarke** (4:38)

you. Yeah, this is, this is honestly, this is the villain story, right? So I was like to him, like, I don't want to argue with you. I literally just want to do my job. So what ended up happening anyway, I delivered a couple of things to them. I ended up leaving and I handed in my notice rather, right? So I was a permanent member of staff at the time. I spoke to the IT director. I was like, this is just not worth it. The team are making it very, very difficult for me to deliver what you've asked me to do.

I've delivered X, Y, Z, but I I handed in my notice because I had another job at UBS and the IT director came to me and was like, Kai, I really don't want you to leave. What are UBS paying you? I was a contractor, so I told him the day rate and I told him a little bit higher. He was like, I'm going to match it. So I was like, cool, no problem. I went back after I had my like leaving party, everybody like cut me cake and everything. And then the next day I came into office, brand new suit.

And I was like a contractor now, which is basically heading up the whole IT department. So this is literally the villain story. I went from being a permanent member of staff at that organization to all of a sudden being a contractor and basically telling everybody what to do. Otherwise, I'm going to get rid of you. And then from there, I contracted across a number of different organizations in financial services, you know, EFG Private Bank to Barclays to gambling. So I worked in the gambling sector for a while.

I worked in The healthcare sector for a while. I worked in telecoms with Virgin Media and Vodafone, always rolling out, you know, digital transformations. I moved from being a BA to being a project manager, management consultant. And I literally delivered something for a year or two, got itchy, went to go deliver something else. And I did that for a number of time before getting into crypto and Web3 in around 2018. And I've been in this since.

**Host** (6:06)

I love it. So you start Kai Inc. What was the brand? Do you have a brand of this or was it sort of like one of those brandless consultancies?

**Cairon Clarke** (6:13)

Yeah, it was CC Connections, Cairn Clarke

**Host** (6:15)

Connections. I was

**Cairon Clarke** (6:16)

connecting the

**Host** (6:17)

dots. I figured it was something like that, right? So you do a digital transformation, but a lot of it is financial institutions, infrastructure, modernization. So I can see how it's kind of laying some of the foundation. And then 2018 shift more into this Web3 crypto digital asset world. What made that switch?

**Cairon Clarke** (6:36)

So what made that switch? That's a very funny and interesting story. So we were also always like interested in Bitcoin around university days. And one of my friends, this was 2017, my co-founder actually, and I co-founded the previous business with him as well. He said to me, Kai, you gotta buy this thing. It's like, it's called Ethereum. It's like the new Bitcoin. You can build applications on it, like buy it. And I was like, yeah.

Cool story bro like I'll buy it and then it started rallying crazy and I ended up buying the top of that bull market and I think like two weeks later literally dumped like 80% but I was super interested in building applications on chain and we built a real estate tokenization platform on Polygon

**Host** (7:11)

yeah

**Cairon Clarke** (7:11)

right which was Matic at the time we tokenized a bunch of assets we tried to get regulated by the FCA obviously couldn't But very interesting experience, learned a lot. And we actually ended up sending that software to one of the providers that were using it. So it was a good outcome for us. But since then, I'd pretty much been very interested in Web3, you know, from a trading perspective, from a DeFi perspective, from working with different protocols, payment protocols, DeFi protocols, et cetera.

And my love for Web3 slash crypto has pretty much been, you know, locked in since then.

**Host** (7:38)

So you get enthusiastic about this. You have a decent early outcome, but you're an ambitious guy. You want more. How do we get from there to where you are now running Zynta? Like what's the jump to the next stage?

**Cairon Clarke** (7:51)

Yeah, 100%. Again, great question. So I pretty much got really, really, really interested in Solana around 2020. 2021. And I joined Super Team UK, you know, kind of working with different builders, built a few different things, built training bots, built as you do, and worked with a couple of payment providers. At the time we built around 2024, we built our, what is now Zynta, which was Global Chain at the time, right? Terrible name. Everybody always asks us, was it a blockchain?

But it was essentially a B2C on and off ramp for Africa. It was using some other people's infrastructure, some of the early days. And we were struggling with churn. So users would come, they'd do a couple of transactions and they would leave. And then we ended up doing our first transaction for a business. Right. And they needed to move $300,000 from Nigeria to the UK. And we actually did it using Stablecoins. So over the last four, five, six months, we've been struggling with these like micro transactions.

And then we did one transaction that basically we generated more fees from that one transaction than we had over the last four or five months. So we were like, that's it, we're pivoting to businesses. And we doubled down on initially OTC, you know, so Stablecoin to local currency OTC for Africa, and then started to build a platform around it. That's how Guesses Inter begun.

**Host** (9:03)

When you do something and you make just as much money in one go as you've made over the last several months.

**Cairon Clarke** (9:07)

Yeah, you got to make that decision. It's a

**Host** (9:13)

nudge. Okay, that makes total sense. So you see, hey, there could be more volume here. And you're living in the UK at the time, but you have Nigerian roots.

**Cairon Clarke** (9:20)

Yeah, so half Nigerian, half Jamaican, spent a lot of time in Nigeria. I remember, so I used to go to Nigeria a lot as a child, right? And there was one time I went with my grandmother. So I was really fortunate actually to see not only my grandparents who are majority of them are still alive, but actually my great grandparents. And I went to Nigeria when I was seven or eight to...

I'd seen my great-grandmother a couple of times because she was getting a bit sick, but then she passed away and I went when I was eight, which was supposed to be for two weeks and I ended up staying for nine months. I came back to the UK with an accent and all the kids were laughing at me. Even my dad was like, this isn't my son, who's this guy? I'd always kind of gone back to Nigeria, but I hadn't gone to Nigeria from the age of 10 until I was about 24, 25.

So obviously going back to Nigeria around 25 was like completely eye-opening for me, right? Because all I could see was opportunities, right? So although it was a great space, a great city, a lot of things were broken and where things are broken, For guys like us that are disruptors, you can kind of see elements for opportunity to kind of build and improve things.

And in terms of payments, I remember I'd always have to walk around with like bundles of cash because I didn't have a bank verification number so I couldn't open a bank account. I didn't have a phone number because I couldn't get BVN and I couldn't get an NIN. It was just really complicated for me to pay for things.

**Host** (10:36)

Did that ever go south, having all that cash on you?

**Cairon Clarke** (10:38)

The hustler boys in Nigeria would always just ask you for more tips. When you were bringing the cash out, they'd be like, okay, this guy's got more money. Let me just ask for more. And that was what they'll do. But apart from that, like, I actually think Nigeria is safer than, well, parts of Nigeria are generally safer than London now,

**Host** (10:51)

which

**Cairon Clarke** (10:52)

is crazy. That's

**Host** (10:52)

interesting.

**Cairon Clarke** (10:53)

Yeah, so yeah, spent a lot of time there and kind of figured that, you know, in terms of payments, there was a real opportunity there. And I guess the more I kind of went back and forth, that's when I was like, you know, there's a real opportunity to build and kind of democratize payment infrastructure specifically for Africa, right? Because when you look at how Africa's evolved, they didn't build landlines, they went straight to mobile.

Even like the banking system, they didn't necessarily build robust banking system, they kind of went to mobile money. And I think the opportunity now is kind of like the lay on top of that is actually building on stablecoins to build that regulator stablecoin infrastructure to make sure that payment flows can work as seamlessly and as smoothly as expected.

**Host** (11:32)

Yeah, that's really interesting just to note the jump because it's not necessarily a gradual adoption. Exactly. Like modern consumer technology, modern banking is just like right there. Now we've got it. But obviously you're going around and you're still seeing people transacting with bundles of cash and all the other sort of hiccups of a developing economy.

**Cairon Clarke** (11:53)

Exactly.

**Host** (11:54)

And it's not just Nigeria.

**Cairon Clarke** (11:55)

It's not just Nigeria. It

**Host** (11:56)

happens to be one of the most populous, evolving economies. I mean, obviously, but there's a lot of other population centers. There's a lot of population growth across the whole continent. So yeah, tons of opportunity.

**Cairon Clarke** (12:06)

Exactly.

**Host** (12:07)

And you see it as, oh, this is not just a place of opportunity, a place with a lot of people, a place with a lot of challenges. It's also ripe for stablecoin adoption. And specifically for you right now, I'm thinking about other places where, like right now we're in New York, right? And sometimes people talk about there not being as much product market fit for stablecoins in the US because we don't have some of the pain points that other nations or other regions more broadly have.

We have like annoying things, the same annoying things of, oh, I can't transact in this way on the weekend or I have to go through this. But go to LATAM or go to some parts of Asia or the whole like the sub-Saharan continent of Africa. It's like, oh, there's some serious product market fit there.

But it still feels like perhaps because of development or infrastructure or something, there's not as many players or as much that's sort of mature in terms of this market and this sort of sub-sector of the economy in Africa. Is that what you see? That still feels kind of early?

**Cairon Clarke** (13:06)

Yeah, I think there's like a huge opportunity, right? You know, kind of speaking to your point, I feel the same way about Europe.

**Host** (13:14)

So

**Cairon Clarke** (13:14)

when I'm in London, your payments just work. Our payment system's better, right, than the US payment system. Even on weekends, you know, CHAPS works, it's quick. I make a payment, it comes pretty much instantly. And actually, contrary to popular belief, a lot of African countries, kind of similar to like Brazil and PICS, Their local currency to local currency payment system is immediate. It works brilliantly. It's more when you're talking more about global dollar access and euros, pounds, etc.

That's where kind of the issues arise. And looking specifically at the opportunities, I think there's a real opportunity to build specifically regulated payment infrastructure. Because as TradFi is merging more with the crypto world, large enterprises, government agencies, and businesses will want to work with the regulated entities to make sure that they can actually build that long-lasting payment infrastructure. And that's where I see the huge opportunity.

**Host** (14:05)

And you've seen that from both sides. You spent the first chapters of your career as a TradFi infrastructure guy. Exactly. You were a leading edge tech adopting person, but you were with UBS, Barclays, JPMC, like lots of other large organizations that we know to be part of the traditional financial stack. But now you've been crypto-pilled. Stablecoin

**Cairon Clarke** (14:27)

film, whatever you want

**Host** (14:29)

to call it, you know. But you see the opportunity of bridging that as well as maybe bridging markets like the Middle East, Africa, Europe.

**Cairon Clarke** (14:36)

100%. And actually, I think the last mile is the important piece, right? Because when you look at payments, it's kind of like first mile orchestration and last mile. I think orchestration has pretty much been done by the blockchain, which is, you know, quite easy in terms of like, you know, stablecoin payments. I think when you're turning, everybody wants access to the dollar right now, you know, because it is the world's reserve currency.

By looking at stablecoins into Nigerian Naira, Ghana Cedis, South African Rand, et cetera, all of the other African currencies is the really hard bit. Because A, you know, the liquidity can be difficult. B, you need to have very good banking relationships. And C, the off-ramp is just the hardest piece. And that's why we're building for that. Because if you do hard things well, you know, there's huge opportunity.

**Host** (15:16)

Yeah, there's a big opportunity there. You see that there's maybe something defensible there. Like, what is the defensibility of doing that? Is there going to be other bigger players that come in after and try to gobble folks like you up? Or do you think you can win and stay?

**Cairon Clarke** (15:28)

I think it's a mixed bag. We're definitely building for the long term. The reason why we set up, we set something up called the AVAF, which is the African Virtual Assets Forum. And essentially what that does is brought together to drive stablecoin adoption and regulation across a number of different African countries. It's got central bankers, ministers of finance. We have a bunch of different events that we're doing across the continent of Africa.

Our first event will be in Senegal, sponsored by Tether and Solana Foundation. With that, we're able to actually drive a lot of the regulatory clarity that's needed across the continent of Africa. And that will work as a really good distribution tool for us to be able to onboard businesses onto our infrastructure, to be able to be that household name in terms of, you know, building those regulated flows. In terms of somebody larger gobbling us up, it may happen in the future, right?

They may be interested in acquiring us for our licenses and what we're building. But as it stands for now, I'm very much interested in building something long lasting and something that, you know, stands the test of time.

**Host** (16:23)

I love it. So it feels very exciting to me to hear you talk about this because you've got various different players. You've got some of the folks like Tether and Solana, these very important establishment ecosystem players. Now you're talking about government systems, the regulated finance side of it, as well as some of the more traditional finance operators. And you are being part of this ecosystem connector through EVAF as well as through Zynta. Like what a moment.

**Cairon Clarke** (16:49)

Yeah, I think it's great. And for us, like we have regulation At the forefront of our mind, right? So even though we're a company that's kind of been operational for about a year and a half, we're in a number of different regulatory processes. We already are licensed in Canada with the Canadian MSP and RPAA. We are part of the first Nigerian cohort for the new regulation. Underneath the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian Revenue Service, which is fantastic for a pre-C-stage company.

We also are about to get our licenses in Liberia and Senegal. And we submitted to sandboxes in Ghana and Zambia as well. So, you know, considering where we are and in terms of the footprint that we're looking to expand into, we're very much aggressive on acquiring the licenses and building properly. Compliance is a difficult thing to run away from over

**Host** (17:32)

time.

**Cairon Clarke** (17:33)

I think a lot of businesses, you know, that have Achieved really good scale have been able to scale because they're avoiding some compliance processes right but building for that now really builds a very strong foundation of the business and enables you know there's opportunities for scale for potential acquisition and for to actually work with some of the larger enterprises and government agencies globally.

**Host** (17:54)

Yeah. Take me into some of these economies. It can be Nigeria or what you're seeing in Ghana or Senegal or any of these. What are some of the pain points that you think can be solved in the near term in terms of what does the financial system look like here? I mean, there's sort of the headlines things that we hear about, but what are you seeing as problems where you specifically want to take this on?

And if you get this right over the next couple of years, this will get fixed in terms of financial systems in these countries.

**Cairon Clarke** (18:21)

I think it's important to kind of clarify how payments work, first and foremost. So specifically with our kind of business, there's generally, in my opinion, like kind of four layers, right? So there's like, I could build an API that's connected to somebody else's API, that's connected to somebody else's API. And I think that's a lot of what's happening in this space. And generally there's a couple of different providers that are providing APIs to everybody else, right?

If you're that kind of business, yeah, you get quick access, but essentially subservient to their compliance demands, To, you know, speed of operation, landed transactions. And it can be quite difficult to scale that kind of business. The level above that is where you have direct relationships with the liquidity partner. So, you know, you may build an API or flows into that liquidity partner. You have a really good relationship with them. We have some great relationships.

We have a couple of our liquidity providers that are actually investing in us in this round because we do some decent flow with them. The level above that is like you're licensed in a specific entity and you're able to work directly with a local banking partner. So whether that is commercial bank, a state bank, a microfinance bank, whatever, and you would do direct flows with that bank and USD to USDT with Tether, for example, or with Circle, Minting, Burning, whatever.

The level above that is you actually own your own bank. So you are able to capture deposits, you're able to have the local currency to stable currency liquidity, and you're able to manage all the off ramps and virtual accounts and everything else. So where we are now in terms of what we've built today, we're pretty much like Do you feel like it's kind of an open field enough to play there where you can hit on several of these levels?

**Cairon Clarke** (20:08)

Yeah, I think what we'll be able to do really well is number three, which is like, you know, acquire licenses in a bunch of different regions. We already have some really, really good banking partners across the continent of Africa from, you know, Providence Bank to UBA to Wema Bank, etc. So we're very, very excited about, you know, the opportunities that lie there. But over time, we do want to operationalize upwards as well.

**Host** (20:28)

Totally. Okay. So folks, you said we went to mobile adoption and then mobile banking adoption pretty quick, but you're still seeing pain points.

Something that was interesting to me hearing you talk about the different players involved is I'm thinking about what are the things that keeps investment out of Sub-Saharan Africa and how does, maybe not Sub-Saharan, maybe just all of the continent, I don't know how this affects players like Morocco, Egypt, all the sort of like corridor across the Sahara, but How does this solve the stability of currencies or companies wanting to invest here or just money movement between people, between companies and employees, governments that have sometimes had raking off of government funds?

How are we playing here? I've spent some time in various places, including very developed economies like South Africa.

That still have pretty big issues with some of this stuff in terms of their economic development and it feels like despite having amazing opportunities abundant natural resources so on and so forth have sometimes there's a hiccup in terms of development which is we could get into all the like In terms of the moment, do you see this as something that can bring a lot more economic vitality to some of these countries and perhaps like stability and opportunities in terms of global trade?

**Cairon Clarke** (21:52)

There's a couple of questions in there. There are,

**Host** (21:54)

yeah. I rambled a little bit too much, but please, break it

**Cairon Clarke** (21:57)

down. It's all great, and I'll try and break it down as much as possible. I think on the VC aspect and the funding aspect, there has been some significant investment that's gone into more the US corridors. And subsequently, the Latin American corridors, because there's obviously from like a time zone perspective and a corridor perspective, it kind of makes the most sense, right?

And then in terms of investment that's gone into Africa, there hasn't necessarily previously been as much investment that's gone into Africa. And therefore, there hasn't necessarily been extraordinary outcomes that have come out of the back of that in terms of like unicorns. But if there's not the investment going in, Then there's not going to be the unicorns that come out.

However, what I've seen more recently is that venture are kind of seeing opportunities in emerging markets because when you look specifically at stablecoins, you know, and payment infrastructure, like we said, European payment infrastructure pretty much works. American payment infrastructure is obviously being built, but again, like works quite well. So the opportunities now are in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

So more recently, we've actually seen a lot more investment that's been going into the sub-Saharan African region, which is very interesting. And when you think about the outcome, people speak about payment outcomes as this is the crypto bubble and this is what's happening to stablecoins. But I think you have to think about the outcomes as this is how much the banking system is making from their fees. If you look at JP Morgan, a lot of the other banks, they've had record profits year on year.

And I think neobanks bespoke payment infrastructure is actually not going to eat from each other, but start to eat into the fees and the revenues of the traditional banks. And that's where I think the huge opportunity is, which could have a 10, 20, 30x upside. So I think we're still very much early in that space in terms of outcomes. And I'm very, very, very excited about the opportunities for stablecoins and payment infrastructure. I feel like we live in a bit of an echo chamber in crypto, right?

Everybody here in crypto understands stablecoins and how they work and what the infrastructure and what the payments look like. If you speak to the average person and you ask them, forget about stablecoins, what is Bitcoin? A lot of them don't even know that. Take it down to Solana. They don't have a clue. Talk about stablecoins, the average person still doesn't know what it is. So it's still very much as early in my opinion in terms of the opportunities to build and the opportunities to have extraordinary outcomes.

Now speaking more specifically about the dollarization of what will happen in a lot of these emerging markets economies. And I think, fortunately or unfortunately, and maybe fortunately for the local participants, but maybe unfortunately for the governments, Stablecoin has pretty much enabled, or accelerated rather, the dollarization globally, right? For people to get access to the dollar. Everybody right now wants access to the dollar, right? People want to be paid in dollars.

What we've been seeing by some of our conversations with central banks, ministers of finance, et cetera, They are trying to enforce people to still pay for things in local currency right so whether that's even taxes you know if you're going to pay for your taxes and stablecoins there still needs to be an off-ramp service that will change your stablecoins into local currency to make sure that your local currency stays within the economy and also what we've seen with a lot of the frameworks that have been going into place across west africa and central africa is that taxation frameworks are coming in.

So where there is more dollarization that comes in, the governments will make more money from taxation. So it's kind of like a balancing act in terms of generating revenue versus having your currency devalue.

**Host** (25:13)

Are you hearing talk about issuing local stablecoins or stablecoins tied to the local currencies here?

**Cairon Clarke** (25:18)

Yeah, we have seen some, like definitely. The main one in Africa now is CNGN, which is like the Nigerian Naira stablecoin. They don't have much volume. But I think that is a story that is painted across all stablecoins, right? US dollar stablecoins take up 99.6% of all volume globally. Even the Euro stablecoin, which is like the second highest, hardly does any volume compared to other stablecoins. I think there will be more local stablecoins, but again, the problem will be liquidity.

The problem will be on-chain FX and how much liquidity is there.

**Host** (25:49)

In the near future, if some of these economies are more dollarized, obviously there's ministers of finance, folks in that local economy who might not be thrilled about that for some reason. What's the kind of pro-con though, either from a consumer perspective or a more institutional perspective, if folks are transacting in USDC, TEE, AUSD, et cetera?

**Cairon Clarke** (26:12)

The pro is probably like having more access to US dollars in your economy. Because something that we've seen quite a lot and actually why there was initially like a use case is a lot of these countries don't necessarily have dollars in their banking system, right? So they only have access to local currency. For example, this happened to me. I've had dollars in my Nigerian bank account, not even much, right? Like $50,000. And I've asked for it to be remitted.

And the bank manager says, hey, we don't have the dollars available right now. Give me like three, four days to get access to the dollars. And then I'm going to send it out. It's going to take a week to get sent out. And I'm going to charge you 4%. So that is a common issue across Africa holistically anyway. So on the pro side, the sort of integrations that we could do with banks, we could actually provide Additional stablecoin liquidity in terms of dollars to banks.

I think the con side is almost every currency globally has been going downwards against the dollar, right? I think Zambia has had one of the most positive currencies against the dollar for last year. But the majority of currencies are, I mean, even the dollar is going downwards against everything else,

**Host** (27:11)

right? So you see all this opportunity in these various economies. Roll out the roadmap for me a little bit though. Where are you focused right now? You're working on this off-ramp, sticky technology. What's the focus for Zynta right now?

**Cairon Clarke** (27:25)

Yeah, so the focus for Zynta is like two-pronged, right? And I kind of think of every business in three different aspects, product distribution and finance. So on the product side, we're building our APIs. We already have our APIs for Nigerian Naira. We have virtual accounts coming out. Garnet CD is pretty much there as well in testing. XOF, XAF. And then we'll have a bunch of other African currencies that will be coming out soon as well, right?

We work with a couple of providers that will integrate into our API for USD, Euros, Pounds, etc. so that we have a full scope of API access for anybody that wants to plug their APIs into their infrastructure, whether that's DeFi protocols, wallets, brick and mortars, other payment service providers, whatever. On the distribution side, what we're working on is distribution via AVAF. So that is working to work with governments to get regulation.

We see the big picture as us actually being able to provide globally high quality regulated infrastructure to people that want to do payments intra or into Africa, right? So, you know, global businesses that want to do payments into Africa and local businesses that want to pay from Ghana to Senegal, for example. On the finance side, we're very close to closing our fundraiser, which I'm super excited about, can't wait to announce it once it's done.

And that's where we are, and we're gonna use that money to just accelerate faster. I think what we've done to date with the money we've had has been great, but yeah, we're just gonna accelerate faster.

**Host** (28:46)

I love it, we're getting in on the early days. But you're a super villain, so you have a plan for world domination, I assume? I have a plan

**Cairon Clarke** (28:51)

for world domination.

**Host** (28:52)

What does that look like?

**Cairon Clarke** (28:53)

Can I tell you? This is the real alpha right here. This is the real alpha right here. This is the real alpha right here. The plan for Domination is to have strong payment regulated infrastructure in 20 African countries and then to start moving to other emerging markets as well. We have some very interesting banking integrations that we're doing across Latin America as well. Which is exciting. We have a couple of the large banks that are looking to integrate with us in Mexico and in Colombia as well.

So the world domination is not just limited to Africa, it's limited to the world.

**Host** (29:26)

I love it. I love it. But Africa has a strong case for being a place to play right now. Exactly. Yeah. And when you think about the competitive landscape here, does it feel like you have to sort of rush to market and solution all this? Or is it kind of, it's a very big pie, there's a lot of space to play. Obviously, you want to move fast and get things out. But what's the competition like? Or what's that looking like?

**Cairon Clarke** (29:48)

I think it's two-pronged. You're always running, and if you're not running, then why aren't you running, right? I don't even think just in payments, but I think generally it feels like everybody's shipping faster, right? Because of AI. But whether that's actually the case is to be told, right? Because we see a lot of announcements, but when we've spoken to some people about doing integrations with them, they're not ready.

So it's a mix of running and making sure you're running fast, utilizing AI where you can to operationalize and speed up your Dev operations, go to market, sales, whatever it is. And I think AI is going to continuously help us to do

**Host** (30:18)

that.

**Cairon Clarke** (30:19)

On the other side, there is a huge pie that is available, right? And we want a very big slice of it. So what we see and what we have seen actually is that there's, especially in Web3 and crypto, there's two types of companies. Companies with regulatory advantages and moats and companies without. And somebody that I've seen outside of the payment space that has done really well in terms of having some of that governmental like regulatory relationships is Pudgy Penguins. And for me, they've transcended crypto.

They're not just a crypto brand. They're not just an NFT project. They are a whole movement in the same way that Hello Kitty is. However, they have some very good governmental relationships to ensure that over time they'll continue to grow and be able to expand as they want to expand, whether that's into trading, whether that's into prediction markets, whatever is into whatever.

For us, we want to be on the side of regulation because we feel that specifically as AI started to develop, a lot of the moats that existed previously don't necessarily exist anymore. So first move advantage, you know, you can build something today and I can get my AI to copy it. I think the technology and software advantage is pretty much gone as well. A lot of the only advantages that are left are regulatory.

So actually having, you know, that regulatory advantage, which provides you some time, 12 to 24, maybe 36 months, obviously depending on the region, but not an everlasting mode. And I think the one that people still really underdevelop is relationships. Relationships obviously help with distribution. Relationships help with opening doors that you can't necessarily open yourself. And we're trying to leverage those and every unfair advantage that we can. That is legal, of course.

**Host** (31:51)

Of course. Yeah. Sometimes we have these conversations, particularly with infrastructure, cross-border, these sorts of solutions. They can start to blend together. A lot of things can start to seem the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reality.

**Drew Rogers** (32:04)

Yeah.

**Host** (32:05)

So how do you win? Maybe relationships and regulation. How do you actually distinguish yourselves from the field? How do you end up as the preferred partner for blank, blank, blank, blank, blank? Large institutions, governments, et cetera. If you have a warm relationship, if you have a way in, and if you've sort of gotten ahead of the regulatory curve, I think it's a good bet. Good place to place your chips. Hey, what do I know about you? No, no, we're excited for you.

I mean, always fun when we get to talk to a builder who's still like somewhat early, but also experiencing a little bit of the traction where it's like, hey, something big is kind of coming down the line. I would love to go to your party in Lagos or Cape Town or wherever when we're toasting your great success in the coming years. Your world domination. I'm sure it'll be a good one. I was gonna say,

**Cairon Clarke** (32:51)

we'll have it on a yacht. It has to be a yacht.

**Host** (32:53)

Yeah, Gulf of Guinea or down in Cape Town. We'll call

**Cairon Clarke** (32:57)

the yacht CC

**Host** (32:57)

Connections. I love it, I love it. Well, this is great. Any final words, something we haven't talked about that's like, ah, we really should hit on this?

**Cairon Clarke** (33:04)

Any final words? I'll just say, check our infrastructure out.

**Host** (33:11)

I love it. I love it. CC Connections, the yacht is coming as is Global Payments Extraordinaire. Yeah, we're really excited for you. Thanks for coming on.

**Cairon Clarke** (33:19)

Appreciate you.