Ezeebit, a South African payments infrastructure startup regulated by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, has closed a $2.05 million seed round to scale its stablecoin and crypto payment rails across Africa.
The capital will accelerate product development, merchant onboarding and strategic partnerships across South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.
The company enables merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments with instant stablecoin settlement and next business day local fiat payouts.
Since launching in 2023, Ezeebit says it has processed more than 30,000 transactions representing millions of dollars in gross merchandise value.
Notable merchants on the platform include iStore, Le Creuset, Scoin, Tintswalo Lodges, Amiri and Diesel.
The round was led by Raba Partnerships, an African fintech investor known for backing early-stage founders in emerging markets.
Founder Collective participated as an anchor investor. Founder Collective cofounder David Frankel noted that many Africans hold crypto but lack practical ways to spend it, and he framed Ezeebit as the bridge between modern crypto rails and existing merchant infrastructure.
Ezeebit was built by three brothers, Daniel, David and Jonthan Katz, who designed the product after experiencing cross-border payment frictions first hand.
Daniel Katz, the company’s CEO, describes Ezeebit as a compliance-first payment layer that connects decentralised wallets and custodial services to local payout rails.
The platform is wallet agnostic and supports major assets including Bitcoin, USDT, USDC and Ether, while presenting omnichannel integration points such as Android point of sale devices, e-commerce plugins and APIs.
The business case for a product like Ezeebit is clear in parts of Africa where card penetration is low, mobile money adoption is high and stablecoins have found use as a store of value in high inflation settings.
The company highlights structural tailwinds: low credit card usage in Sub-Saharan Africa, rising smartphone adoption and a spike in on-chain value moving through the region.
Ezeebit argues merchants face costly card fees, slow settlement and limited cross-border options, and that crypto rails can reduce friction while preserving fiat payouts for merchant accounting.
What sets Ezeebit apart is its regulatory positioning. Being an FSCA-regulated Financial Services Provider and a registered Crypto Asset Service Provider gives the startup a compliance credential that can ease partnerships with banks, payment service providers and telcos.
That regulatory status makes the platform easier for conservative merchants and institutional partners to evaluate compared with unregulated alternatives.
The product fits a practical gap in African payments but execution will hinge on several operational factors.
First, onramps and offramps remain the single biggest friction point for merchant adoption. Ezeebit’s next business day fiat payout model is useful, but scaling that model requires robust liquidity lines and tight bank integration.
Second, merchant education matters. Many small retailers will need straightforward UX and clear settlement guarantees before they shift volume away from card rails or cash.
Third, stablecoin risk cannot be treated as trivial. Regulatory shifts in the issuing or settlement jurisdictions, as well as liquidity squeezes during market stress, are real hazards that a compliant provider must model and mitigate.
If Ezeebit executes, it could broaden payment choice for consumers who already hold crypto and supply merchants with lower-cost rails for cross-border receipts.
That said, the company will need to deepen relationships with local banks and PSPs, refine its risk and compliance tooling, and build node-level liquidity to keep settlement fast and predictable.
The new funding gives Ezeebit runway to tackle those operational challenges while expanding merchant footprint across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.
How quickly the company can convert regulated technical infrastructure into widespread retail acceptance will determine whether stablecoins become a mainstream option for everyday payments in the region.
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