Coy to Build Africa’s Foreign Exchange Infrastructure

Stabyl, a fintech company emerging from stealth with a $2.7 million pre-seed investment led by Konga, is building institutional-grade foreign exchange infrastructure that enables banks, payment service providers, and financial institutions to access liquidity more efficiently while significantly reducing settlement times.

Speaking about Stabyl, its Co-founder, Zachary Schwartzman, said: “Our goal is to connect participants on one platform, creating the deepest and most accessible liquidity pool on the continent.”

According to him, Stabyl is neither a consumer-facing app nor a cross-border payments platform. The problem it aims to solve lies at the point where financial institutions source foreign exchange before a payment can be made. 

Another Co-founder at Stabyl, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, illustrated this with the example of a large institution like Konga. He explained that when the e-commerce company needs foreign exchange, its treasury team typically reaches out to multiple banks, payment service providers, and liquidity providers to compare rates and source liquidity.

Co-founder, Michael Anyi, said: “Everybody on Stabyl can create a transaction, and that transaction gets matched and queued immediately. That entire process of having to make calls, hold transactions, figure out rates and do all this manual labour is completely removed.”