Every few weeks, James Mugambi meets another freelancer who has done the work but can’t touch their money. Payments from Upwork or PayPal arrive late, sit in limbo for weeks, or vanish into a maze of bank partners and compliance checks, while rent and school fees don’t wait.
Hurupay, a Nairobi-based cross-border fintech he co-founded in 2023, is trying to untangle that mess.
The startup provides African freelancers with virtual dollar, euro, and pound accounts backed by stablecoins, to receive international payouts like US-based workers and cash out to local bank accounts or mobile money.
Since January 2025, Hurupay has processed over $50 million in payments and is now marginally profitable, according to Mugambi, the startup’s Chief Operating Officer (COO).
Hurupay is betting that a narrow focus on remote workers, lean operations, and stablecoin rails can support a sustainable business in one of Africa’s most crowded fintech markets. The bet has a tailwind: stablecoins already account for at least 43% of all crypto transaction volume in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the region moved over $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
“Our numbers are still rookie numbers compared to [bigger players] out there,” Mugambi said. “We’re profitable, yes, but as a startup, you have to look at profitability relative to how much growth you still want to pursue.”
Philip Mburu (Chief Executive Officer), Allan Okoth (Chief Technology Officer), and Mugambi founded Hurupay in 2023 as a traditional remittance product moving money from one country to another.
The team abandoned that model in November 2024, after concluding that Africa’s remittance market was too crowded to support meaningful scale, with hundreds of startups already competing on price and speed.
Africa’s cross-border remittance space is already packed with traditional giants like Western Union and MoneyGram, global fintechs such as Wise and Revolut, and a long list of African startups, including LemFi, Chipper Cash, NALA, Klasha, Raenest, Send by Flutterwave, and Fincra, all chasing the same corridors with similar “send money home” products.
Hurupay, currently run by a 10-person team, now centres its product on freelancers and remote workers who earn in dollars or euros, but struggle to receive payments into their local bank accounts or mobile money.
“Freelancers already use platforms like PayPal and Wise, but they encounter a lot of problems there,” Mugambi said. “Payments get withheld for months, accounts get flagged because of geographical location, or employers simply cannot send money easily to emerging markets.”
Building a payments layer for freelancers
Hurupay’s product works like a global receiving account for remote workers. Users sign up and complete identity verification in the Hurupay app; once approved, they receive virtual bank accounts denominated in dollars, euros, or pounds, which they can add as payout destinations on platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, PayPal, and Stripe.
“When you create a Hurupay account, we give you a dollar account, a euro account, and a pound account,” Mugambi said. “Freelancers in emerging markets can then receive payments from platforms in the US or Europe as if they were residents of those countries, and once the money lands, they can withdraw it locally.”
Under the hood, Hurupay combines its own wallet infrastructure with licenced banking and payout partners. Banks in the US and Europe issue virtual accounts, while local partners in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana handle cashouts to bank accounts and mobile money.
Funds received are typically converted into dollar-backed stablecoins, such as USD Coin (USDC) or USD Tether (USDT), and reflected in a user’s wallet balance before being withdrawn via local rails or crypto.
Okoth said the real difficulty lies in getting multi-step transfers to clear across fragmented systems that don’t communicate with each other.
“A single transfer touches US banks, stablecoin conversion, routing, and local payouts, and any of those steps can fail or be delayed, so we’ve built our own custody, gasless stablecoin transfers [so users don’t need to hold Ether or BNB for fees], and retry systems on top of an engine that routes transactions across multiple providers in each region,” said Okoth.
Mburu says Hurupay’s model is also about managing risk in an environment where access to banks and licences can change quickly.
“The biggest risk is concentration risk around banking and regulatory access,” he said. “We manage that by diversifying partners, building strong compliance capabilities in-house, and using stablecoin rails to reduce our dependence on any single institution or market.”
Hurupay earns a 2% fee on every incoming payment, plus a network charge of about $0.50 that covers partner and blockchain costs. Mugambi said the company currently operates with roughly 40% profit margins, earning about $0.40 for every $1 it spends.
Internal dashboard data seen by TechCabal shows that Hurupay processed over $10 million in total payment volume (TPV) in February 2026 alone, including transfers routed to external wallets, and generated more than $500,000 in revenue over the past 12 months. The startup processed about 90% of its volume on Base, the layer-2 blockchain network.
The next step for Hurupay, said Mugambi, is to grow from its current run rate to a much higher level of transaction volumes, moving from roughly $10 million in monthly payments toward $100 million processed each month over time.
“Those are the kind of numbers we are looking at to unlock the next level,” he said.
A fraud hit and a compliance reset
Hurupay’s growth was briefly knocked off course in March 2025, when suspected fraud on the platform forced the startup to pause activity on parts of the product and rebuild its compliance stack. Transaction volumes dropped sharply as the startup investigated suspicious flows and tightened onboarding.
“Just like any other fintech, we were hit by the reality of fraud,” Mugambi said. “Our volumes tanked by over 80% at one point because we had to pause, clean up the system, and make sure bad actors could no longer access the platform.”
One pattern involved mule accounts: users who sold or handed over their verified Hurupay accounts to third parties in exchange for quick cash, only to later find that stolen money had been routed through those accounts and traced back to them, said Mugambi.
Other attacks involved straightforward account takeovers, where scammers gained control of users’ email and two-factor authentication and then changed withdrawal details.
Hurupay did not provide specific details about the total value of fraudulent transactions, but said it responded by overhauling its compliance stack. Mugambi said the startup now uses global know-your-customer (KYC) and identity verification providers, such as Persona, to onboard users and flag suspicious devices and IP addresses. It also monitors transactions for unusual patterns, working with banking partners to share intelligence.
“Compliance has to be taken seriously from the beginning,” Mugambi said. “The bigger lesson is that compliance quickly becomes one of the biggest cost centres for fintech startups in Africa.”
A crowded market and a narrow target
Hurupay’s niche sits inside one of Africa’s most competitive fintech segments. The continent’s cross-border payments market is valued at about $329 billion and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2035, according to a report by venture capital firm Oui Capital.
A growing share of that volume comes from freelancers and remote workers paid by global platforms rather than by friends or family.
“Remote workers are our sweet spot,” Mugambi said. “The remote work market is already worth more than $100 billion. That’s a big enough market that even [capturing] a small 5% share would be meaningful for us.”
Hurupay is not alone in chasing that opportunity. Pan-African fintech NALA has been pushing its stablecoin-powered Rafiki product to freelance platform payouts, while Kenyan startup Payd and Nigerian fintech startups Raenest and Grey also enable remote workers to create virtual accounts or receive payments in digital currencies and access local cashout options.
Many of those products, like Hurupay, sit between global platforms and local financial systems, using stablecoins as a settlement layer and local partners for off-ramps.
Yet, Mburu argues that the startup’s edge doesn’t simply lie in its focus on freelancers, but in how it packages the underlying infrastructure powering payments.
“Hurupay is building more than a freelancer payments product; we are building on-chain dollar banking for people and businesses outside the US,” he said. “What is hard to copy is our ability to combine stablecoins, compliance, and banking infrastructure into a simple product that feels like modern finance, not crypto.”
Growing without overfunding
Hurupay has raised $150,000 in pre-seed funding and has not raised new equity since March 2025, relying on operating profits to fund growth. The approach, according to Mburu, is a deliberate attempt to test the level of scale their product can achieve without deep external funding.
“We believe capital should amplify product-market fit, not substitute for it,” said Mburu. “Reaching marginal profitability this early has given us the discipline to focus on efficient growth, and to raise only when we are confident the capital will help us compound something already proven.”
After the fraud-induced dip in 2025, Mugambi says monthly volumes have climbed steadily, with each month outperforming the last. Founder-led marketing, targeted ads, and direct engagement with freelancer communities drive most new users, and referrals now account for a meaningful share of signups.
Hurupay plans to add cards and more payout options, but expansion depends on how quickly it can secure and integrate new licensed partners in each country.
“We think we’ve built enough to show there is product-market fit,” Mugambi said. “This year is about growth, growth, growth; supporting more customers, expanding our offerings, and being even more reliable.”
