Checker Raises $8M to Build Stablecoin Liquidity Infrastructure for African Banks and Neobanks
Checker, a global infrastructure network for digital asset markets, has closed an $8 million funding round to accelerate stablecoin-powered financial services across Africa and other emerging markets.
The round was led by Al Mada Ventures, the investment arm of Morocco’s sovereign wealth fund and parent of Attijariwafa Bank, one of Africa’s largest banking groups. Galaxy Ventures and Framework Ventures co-led, with strategic participation from DFS Lab in Africa, Bitso and Airtm in Latin America, and Onigiri Capital, SNZ Capital, and Velocity in Asia.
The round draws notable depth from the African tech ecosystem. Flutterwave co-founder Iyin Aboyeji, former Onafriq VP Gwera Kiwana, and Juicyway co-founder Justin Ziegler are among the angel backers, alongside individuals from Stripe and Tala.
Africa’s stablecoin operators face a structural fragmentation problem. Despite the continent’s widely documented appetite for digital assets, Nigeria consistently ranks among the world’s highest for crypto adoption. At the same time, Kenya and South Africa have moved to formalise Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) licensing frameworks; financial institutions remain hobbled by siloed liquidity pools, high correspondent banking costs, and FX volatility.
In practice, many operators have resorted to stitching together liquidity from dozens of providers, sometimes coordinated through WhatsApp groups, to execute cross-border transactions. Checker’s pitch is a single API that replaces that patchwork with a unified, programmable liquidity network.
“We’re building the network-of-networks infrastructure for the stablecoin era,” said Isaac Umejiaku, Head of Africa Sales at Checker. “With one integration, we connect African financial institutions to multiple payment providers, cross-border payment businesses, and banks globally, dramatically reducing settlement times and fees.”
Through its API, Checker enables banks and neobanks to access stablecoin liquidity, cross-border settlement, treasury management tools, and credit facilities from a single integration point. Key use cases include B2B trade corridor payments, particularly between Africa and China and Africa and the United States, where correspondent banking dependencies have historically made transactions slow and capital-intensive.
Consumer neobanks can also use Checker’s infrastructure to underpin digital savings products and low-cost remittance flows, while larger institutions gain access to compliant FX and trading products aligned with VASP requirements in markets such as Kenya and South Africa.
Al Mada’s involvement carries weight beyond the cheque. As the controlling shareholder of Wafa Cash, a remittance network operating across Africa and into the African diaspora, Al Mada brings operational reach and institutional credibility that few investors in this space can offer.
“The primary barrier to scalability for the stablecoin industry is access to liquidity at scale, specifically the friction in fiat on-ramps and off-ramps,” said Omar Laalej, Managing Director at Al Mada Ventures. “Checker addresses this with a novel orchestration layer that organises fragmented stablecoin liquidity into a programmable, compliant network.”
Checker reports $3 billion in total processing volume since launch, representing roughly 1% of annual global B2B stablecoin payments. Its network currently covers 75 currencies and is already active in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Francophone West Africa. Institutional clients include Rail, since acquired by Ripple, Braza Bank in Brazil, and Belo in Argentina.
The new funding will be deployed across three areas: expanding global payments coverage to reduce correspondent banking reliance; building embedded borrowing and lending capabilities for capital-efficient just-in-time settlement; and launching AI-powered agents for treasury management, back-office automation, and predictive analytics.
“This funding allows us to accelerate our mission to enable financial institutions from Brazil and Kenya, to Hong Kong and the United States, to transform how foreign exchange, payments, trading, and investment products are built,” said CEO Jack Chong.
Checker was co-founded by Chong and Justin McMahan, both of whom have backgrounds in trading and financial infrastructure at global institutions. Chong, who grew up in Hong Kong with family ties to Guangzhou, brings personal familiarity with the South-South trade corridors, particularly Africa-China flows, that sit at the centre of Checker’s commercial thesis.
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