In-depth analysis of the Onafriq stablecoin stack: synergy among the four partners

On July 29, 2026, Onafriq announced a partnership with Privy to build a "regulated stablecoin infrastructure" for the African business-to-business (B2B) market. But this is not the first time the company has made such an announcement this year.

In February, the Conduit cooperation project was launched, mainly focusing on cross-border settlement of institutions. In April, the VALR cooperation project followed up and publicly positioned Onafriq to use VALR's infrastructure to recharge local currency. In June, a Yuno cooperation project was concluded, focusing on providing payment acceptance and transaction orchestration services to merchants around the world. The following July, the Privy cooperation project followed.

When asked Onafriq directly, this repetitive and similarly worded model of partnership announcements raised an obvious question: Are the four collaborations overlapping, redundant, or are they actually belonging to different infrastructure sectors? The company's answers were specific enough to be checked against its public records-in at least one case, it directly corrected previous records.

According to Onafriq, each partner is at a different level of the technology stack.

Conduit provides institutional cross-border settlement infrastructure that enables companies to use stablecoins for international fund transfers, and has built-in fiat currency exchange functions. Yuno has strengthened merchants 'payment acceptance and transaction orchestration capabilities to help companies accept and manage multiple payment methods, including future digital asset functions-a role that is consistent with Yuno's description when announcing the cooperation on June 9, 2026, that is, Onafriq's network is integrated into Yuno's orchestration platform, targeting merchants around the world, covering Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire and Uganda on the first day of launch. Privy focuses on embedded managed and unmanaged wallet infrastructure, allowing companies to embed secure digital wallets into the customer experience without having to manage mnemonics or set up their own wallets.

Onafriq said the collaborations are intended to operate as an interoperable ecosystem covering wallet infrastructure, liquidity, settlement and payment acceptance, giving companies the flexibility to match solutions to specific customers, markets and regulatory environments. Dare Okoudjou, Founder and CEO of Onafriq

Onafriq explains how the four collaborations are divided

Regarding VALR's answer, Onafriq's description differed most from the original report. The April announcement was widely interpreted as Onafriq's adoption of VALR's infrastructure to provide local currency recharge services to African cryptocurrency users. But Onafriq's own description of the relationship completely contradicts that interpretation: "We will not use their infrastructure. They will use our infrastructure because we will provide access to and from fiat currencies in markets where regulations allow." Onafriq also confirmed that VALR was the only one of the four partnerships that was already operational and told this newspaper that the partnership was "just launched recently"-a term that was not used for Conduit, Yuno or Privy.

When asked directly whether the Conduit cooperation project, the earliest announced and the most popular in February, had handled any actual transactions or settled any real channels since its launch, Onafriq did not answer the questions. The response was: "We are satisfied with the progress made in the cooperation." No trading volumes, channels or schedules were provided-either for Conduit or the other three collaborations, except for the confirmation of VALR.

Specific to Privy, Onafriq's description of actual progress is more accurate. "This collaboration marks the beginning of structured collaboration rather than an immediate commercial release," the company said. The current work is technology integration, solution design and pilot use cases, while conducting necessary communication with regulatory agencies.

Onafriq describes its overall strategy as verifying technology, regulatory framework and customer experience through controlled pilots, followed by broader commercial deployment, and customer availability will be announced on a market-by-market basis.

Taken together, Onafriq's description of its stablecoin partnership is more cautious than the announcement itself, although not entirely consistent.

Yuno has been launched in seven markets since its June 9 announcement, while VALR has "just recently launched," according to Onafriq. This leaves Conduit and Privy-the two partnerships most explicitly centered around branding stablecoins-still in a state that, according to Onafriq's own description, has not yet been commercially launched. As for Conduit's actual progress since February, there is no more information other than a general statement of "satisfaction".

This difference is significant. Two collaborations around merchant acceptance and deposit and deposit infrastructure are currently in operation, while two collaborations around stablecoin settlement and embedded wallets-the technology stack that is most directly related to the term "stablecoin" in each press release-either cannot be quantified or are clearly in the pre-release stage.

Until regulation is clear, building a layered, interoperable infrastructure (covering wallets, clearing, liquidity and acceptance) is a defensible strategy for a fast-changing and still largely unregulated field of fintech in Africa. But this does mean that a series of cooperation announcements in the name of stablecoins in 2026 have so far mainly delivered the parts of the technology stack that are least dependent on the actual operation of stablecoins-and the press release itself (unanimously optimistic in tone and roughly the same wording) did not clarify this distinction on its own.