Checker, a startup that provides infrastructure for stablecoin-powered payments, has raised $8 million in equity seed funding to expand its stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, the venture arm of Morocco’s royal family investment group, and Framework Ventures led the seed round, with participation from financial institutions across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including DFS Lab, Bitso, Airtm, Onigiri Capital, SNZ Capital, and Velocity Capital.
The funding round also saw participation from operators in Africa’s tech ecosystem, including Iyin Aboyeji, co-founder of Flutterwave; Gwera Kiwana, former VP of Partnerships and Blockchain Payments at Onafriq; Justin Ziegler, co-founder of Juicyway; and unnamed investors from Stripe and Tala.
This fundraise comes as regulators across Africa begin formalising rules for stablecoins and virtual asset service providers (VASPs). In 2025, Kenya introduced its VASP framework and has since released 2026 draft regulations that operationalise the 2025 Act. Ghana’s Parliament also passed the VASP Act that established a formal legal and regulatory framework for virtual assets.
As more African markets clarify how digital asset businesses can operate, Checker is betting that working with regulated financial institutions across markets will make it a trusted orchestration layer for stablecoin-based payments.
“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. We are incredibly grateful for our customers and investors’ trust,” said Jack Chong, CEO of Checker.
Checker said it will use the funding to deepen its global payments coverage, connect more markets, and build embedded borrowing and lending products that reduce pre-funding requirements for its customers. The company also plans to launch AI agents for treasury management, back-office operations, and predictive analytics tools for financial institutions.
Founded in 2025 by Chong, Nathan Crocker, Justin McMahan, and Michael Zaczyk, Checker builds infrastructure that allows regulated financial institutions, including banks, remittance providers, and neobanks, to plug into global stablecoin liquidity and payment rails through an Application Programming Interface (API) integration.
It acts as a payment orchestration layer for institutions that would otherwise need to integrate separately with multiple providers across different markets. The company said its network supports 75 currencies and African markets, including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Francophone West Africa.
“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”.
African financial institutions are beginning to explore stablecoin-powered payments. In July 2025, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), the intra-African payment initiative, launched the African Currency Marketplace, a blockchain-powered platform built on the Bantu blockchain network to enable direct exchange of African currencies without relying on the US dollar. In October 2025, Flutterwave selected Polygon as its blockchain partner for stablecoin-powered cross-border payments.
Over the past year, Checker said it onboarded institutional clients, including Rail, Braza Bank in Brazil, and Belo in Argentina, while scaling to $3 billion in total processing volume.
The company generates revenue through commissions on transactions processed through its infrastructure. It enters a growing market of stablecoin and cross-border infrastructure providers such as Conduit, competing to become the backend rails for global payments.
Checker said it is expanding to other markets, while strengthening compliance and liquidity partnerships as regulators across Africa develop frameworks for stablecoin and virtual asset service providers.
