Ugandan fintechs look beyond home market to tackle Africa’s payment bottlenecks

Moving money across Africa can mean passing it through several financial institutions, currencies and payment systems before it reaches its recipient. Ugandan fintech companies are building businesses around that friction, seeking customers beyond their home market with services that connect conventional finance and digital assets, according to The Independent Uganda (direct). Their challenge is not simply to reach more countries, but to make payments work reliably between them.

That regional push will be in focus at the Africa Blockchain Festival 2026, scheduled for October 15–17 at Nairobi’s Sarit Expo Centre. Organisers expect more than 3,000 delegates from over 20 countries, including investors, financial institutions, technology developers and regulators. The agenda spans cross-border payments, digital identity and blockchain—shared digital records used to track transactions and assets—with investor forums and startup showcases also planned.

Building the links between markets

Kampala-linked MUDA is targeting the infrastructure behind those transactions. It describes itself as a liquidity provider, supplying access to funds needed to move and settle money. Its services include international collections and payouts, virtual accounts and wallets for stablecoins, digital tokens designed to maintain a stable value. It also converts stablecoins into conventional currencies. MUDA says its platform supports USDC, USDT and cNGN and offers access to liquidity in more than 50 countries.

The company says its customers include banks, fintechs, remittance providers and other businesses that need connections between traditional financial systems and digital-asset networks. Equator Finance, which trades as EQPay Finance Ltd, is pursuing a comparable regional opportunity from Kampala. Its services include completing digital-asset transactions, stablecoin liquidity, directly negotiated trading, remittances and cross-border payments. The emphasis is on helping businesses move value between markets rather than on consumer cryptocurrency trading.

Equator Finance says it serves Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, with settlement links extending to the Gulf, China and Japan.

Credit joins the regional push

Ugandan-founded tisini is applying related technology to lending. In 2025, it partnered with Sphere Labs to connect its artificial-intelligence-powered credit analysis with SphereNet, a blockchain network built for financial applications. The aim is to represent eligible African credit assets digitally on the network, potentially opening another route for investors to participate in those markets. Tisini operates within NSSF Uganda’s innovation sandbox, a setting for developing and testing innovations, and has previously outlined expansion plans for Kenya, Zambia and Ghana.

The wider market brings a larger potential customer base, but also more moving parts. Companies must navigate different currencies, banks, mobile-money platforms and regulatory systems. They also need enough liquidity and dependable settlement arrangements—the processes that complete a transfer—to get money to its destination. Those requirements are central to whether the regional ambitions can translate into reliable services.

The Nairobi festival will bring those commercial and policy questions into the same venue. Its programme includes a policy stage on digital assets and Web3, a term for blockchain-based internet services. Uganda’s science, technology and innovation minister, Monica Musenero Masanza, is listed as an opening speaker, alongside a wider speaker roster that includes Yellow Card’s Kenya and Uganda country manager, Isaac Wabuge. The next test is whether access to investors, financial institutions and regulators helps these firms build the connections needed for dependable cross-border business.