Zuba’s Josiah Senu on Fixing Cross-Border Payments in Africa

Transcript

I'm Justin Freriedman. Welcome to a special live recording of the Stable Pulse taking place at Stable Con USA 2026 just outside Washington DC. Welcome our guest today, Josiah Senu, the co-founder and CEO of Zuba which he launched just 5 months ago. So Josiah, Nigerian parents, you were born in Gaban, raised in London, and I understand you're planning to move to New York City. Why?

>> It's great, great to be here, first of all. >> Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. >> Um, uh, and I suppose like why the move to to New York? Um, uh, it's a place of of incredible ambition. Um, it's a it's a place where I believe the best builders, creators, and inventors in the world come to challenge themselves and place themselves in the arena in the hopes that they might accomplish something much greater for humanity. And so, as an individual who aspires and dreams to create a better future, it feels like a natural home.

>> Great. So, Zuba is brand new. Uh, what does Zuba plan to accomplish? Um the way I like to see it is that in in the emerging markets today there's this process known as de-risking which is happening. So um tier one correspondent banks are leaving um Asia, the South Pacific, the Caribbean, Africa um many others. And so it's created a gap a gap where um when it comes to the the clearance and the settlement of a dollar flow or the clearance and settlement of a supplier paying someone else across borders that is that is difficult. Um so the ambition of our

business is to create um a correspondent bank uh that serves the emerging markets that uh is able to bring back um this the strength to global economies but also to support the the fast urbanization that is happening in these market markets today. And of course we're at stable coin. And we're here to talk about stable coins and you know most people like to talk about stable coins in the western markets but the reality is that the majority of all the flows that are happening today are happening in the emerging markets. Um and so what better use case there is than to serve the people who's who have the most acute need who have the greatest need and and where the need for

the US dollar clearance is is strongest. So, a lot of people talk about how traditional correspondent banking processes and relationships are outdated and just not meeting the moment. What is particularly true about the continent of Africa? >> I think what you have in the in the continent of Africa is uh a dying need to accept money internationally and send it. um you know you you have a a really young population. So the average age is around 21 years old. Um you have a a group of people who will grow from about 1.5 to 4 billion people by the end of the century. Um ultimately GDP growth

far out far outstrips many economies in the world. Uh fundamentally you have an increasing uh a population that's increasingly more economic in its activity. Right? So um GDP per capita will only go up and therefore it needs access to the rest of the world. 70% of of trade happens in US dollars and so if you want participation in the economy you have to in some way engage with USD. Now the challenge that exists in these markets is that access to USD is controlled. Um you have capital controls you have governments which ultimately manage that. Why? Because of exchange risk right? So the huge volatility inflation in these markets in terms of their currencies and and so you have

this very weird situation where you have these these countries which are effectively net importers. You know the balance of payments means that they are bringing in more goods and services paying for those goods and services but they're paying for it with a USD which is almost impossible to access and so they're paying for it in local currency. And of course that has huge implications for um their ability to service their clients locally but also to service customers internationally. >> There's no shortage of fintexs building new rails and trying to solve all these problems. So what is Zuba's superpower?

>> I love that question. Um I I think it's customer obsession. Um and and I say that because um within only a a couple of months um we have continued to to grow our customer base um through through understanding what is actually important for them. Um, and I think it it's in three parts. Um, most people will say it's about price. Um, you give me the best rate, give me the best FX and I'll switch. Um, uh, but the reality is that it's not. Um, actually

there's something more fundamental which is about reliability. So, you know, take uh a payin or a payout that needs to happen in Cameroon or Sagal or Ivory Coast. Um, settlement happens in T plus 9 days, right? 9 days, >> right? >> We are a generation into the internet era and it takes 9 days to move money. >> And and that's astounding, right? Um so so when you think about the problem, um the problem is okay, how do I increase that settlement speed? But then also, right, um you actually don't know whether or not a settlement has bounced until the very end of the process, right? until the sender receives

information back saying that there was a failed payment and that can take two weeks, right? Um so you you have this very weird system where there's a lack of reliability when it comes to actually the payment clearing and settling and you have a ultimately some settlement speed issues and of course you have all the compliance costs associated with the bank moving that money to and fro and the counterparties in the middle of that chain. So when you talk about, you know, what is important, what is Zuba's superpower, it's understanding fundamentally what is the thing that the customer cares about the most. It's getting paid, getting paid on time, and then getting paid at an affordable price.

I can imagine a comical scenario where something goes wrong. The transaction doesn't go through T+9. It's, you know, maybe there's a holiday. You know, it's a couple of weeks before you even realize that the payment wasn't received by the sender. You start the process over again. You're still back to square one T plus 9. It could take a month. >> It could, honestly. I mean, we I've spoken to some uh merchants that we have where they literally told me it would be easier to take a plane from Benin to Gabon uh and carry my money in cash and drop it than it would be to send a payment via the local bank.

>> Incredible. So, over the past few months as you've been building this business, how has your thesis evolved? I I think when we we started the business, it was always with the desire to uh improve access to create financial inclusion um and to provide a a product experience where the customer was not thinking about you know how much money we were taking from them in their fees or but rather how much money we've returned to their pocket. Um I think that thesis for us has still remained true. If anything, it's simply accelerated. I think we've understood very clearly what the challenges in the

market are. You know, there are countless number of people I speak to in the space, countless number of investors, um, uh, even people you tend to hire who are like, well, how are you solving liquidity, right? Everyone always says it's about liquidity. Um, and I think they're wrong. I think they fundamentally misunderstood what the biggest challenge is. >> Look, if you have to preund in destination markets, then liquidity matters a lot, right? I I I I think if you if you try to uh boil it down actually, right, the liquidity comes from your ability to command a better experience for the customer. It's it's a much longer

conversation that you've got to break it down into multiple parts. Everyone attacks the the sourcing liquidity, the preunding of the liquidity in order to fund and pay out and do last mile settlement in a really clear and efficient way. Maybe even credit lines which are associated with that. But ultimately it's a cost of capital and the cost of capital is is an efficiency mechanism and you can reduce the cost of capital if you think very clearly about the sources of capital. >> I love to ask questions about leadership. So uh here's one. What's the biggest mistake, the most expensive mistake that you've made as a founder?

>> The most expensive mistake. Um, I think I've made a number of mistakes. >> Well, I got time. I got time. Tell me about >> a therapy session now. We're going to go into it. Um, I I I think pro probably my most expensive mistake is associated with with people. Um I I I think as as a founder you often have an incredible amount of optimism about everything. Um there is no problem that is too hard to tackle. There is nothing which is impossible. Um and so when you're engaging with someone that you bring on board that you want to work with or you want to have a partnership with often you might engage with uh an element of trust, right? Um and trust is

fundamental to our business, right? It's it's the way it works. If you can't extend that trust, if you can't earn trust, it's it's hard to really deliver outcomes for your business. And I think, you know, in some of our engagements with different counterparties, uh we have trusted and actually been severely burnt as a result of it. And you know, when your customer expects you to settle a $4 million trade and you've trusted a counterparty to settle and that counterparty doesn't settle, it becomes a little bit awkward, you know, telling your customer, "Yeah, you know, your money is stuck." Um, you know, the reality of our space is that a fraud is incredibly high. You're dealing with high-risisk markets. You know, the the transaction monitoring systems have to be correct. There are a lot of of huge and heavy implications with our

business, which is why working with licensed, regulated, compliant um businesses are key, but even licensed, regulated, compliant businesses uh might have practices which are a little bit suspect. >> Tell me about your customer. I I think we have a variety of different customers. Um if I boiled it down to what is the crystallizing thought, it's a business which operates internationally and a consumer and a consumer that spends and buys internationally. like that is fundamentally the customer and that means for that customer a USD account is the central account of operations because the majority of international

trade on commerce will happen in that currency that that world is changing by the way like you know let's not take it for granted right coins that comes at a materially important time but that's the truth right that's the the world as we see it today um then the question is okay what are what are the different types of customers right and you've got everything from you know your crypto exchanges to your tried fire businesses. Um you've got your payroll companies. You've got your remittance businesses, the classic use cases that require infrastructure to be able to support their their customers. And then you've got the importers and exporters who need a business banking account who need corporate treasury needs access to um a credit to yield and a whole variety and slew of different products to to serve.

So I often think actually the way to think about our our customer is is um you know what what are they trying to do? what problem are they trying to solve um in the world of of moving money and making money, growing money um becoming more wealthy. >> So you hit on a few you know well known use cases for crossber money movement but when you think about stable coins what is the biggest opportunity that you haven't seen solved yet? probably um just in time settlement at a merchant

acquiring level. Um you know ultimately the world of card acquiring is still one of preunded balances, credit facility arrangements between um networks and acquirers and issuers. Um and I think there's a gap here that's interesting to solve. I also think when it comes to um a point of sale, so a closed loop ecosystem, uh my my sense is that businesses like Starbucks and and Target, etc., where the merchant has its own stable coin and is using that to manage its operations and almost businesses becoming um I say quasi

banks um uh you I use that in a in a soft way >> financial platforms >> but but yeah ultimately right like these platforms that are now able to to manage um the economics of their business much better which should hopefully then translate it into uh a superior experience cost for uh the business or consumer. >> Do consumers know about stable coins? Do they care about stable coins? >> It depends on what part of the world you're talking about?

>> Yeah. >> Right. Um if you're talking about a a merchant or consumer in Lagos, yeah, I mean, they care about stable coins a lot cuz USDT is a great way for me to be able to to move money, have it as a store of value. If I'm in Venezuela, I care about stable coins a lot, right? Um, but if I'm a European or American merchant, I don't know if I care about stable coins that much and I don't know if I care as much because there's no real direct contributing value. There's no 10x in the way operate. It's maybe like a 1x or a 2x, right? So, you got to find the right use cases in order to to support um that that fund flow. So, um I guess if the question is like why do stable coins matter? I don't think they matter necessarily today directly for um

a a business or consumer using it but it does matter from an infrastructure perspective um because it's it's in my view what is civilizationally important which is this permissionless protocol um and that is a really fundamental architectural design of the world as we know it you know everyone's talking about AI and you know great I love AI too but but there's something actually really fundamental happening um at the base layer of of money movement of money as a concept, right? Um, which people are missing and if you miss it, um, it might be too late.

>> Do you see some potential to more economically move smaller amounts of money that, you know, just don't earn enough revenue for, you know, legacy traditional money movers to care about today? >> For sure. Right. Micro payments are are massive. um where you know if it's an onchain transaction and the gas fee is effectively negligible and so if you're doing an onchain transaction I mean even onchain effects of atomic swaps between currencies you're doing at immersion point of sale that naturally you're going to end up in a world for sure where like for that specific use case of course for a business to to make money off of that you need a you know a unit economic model where you know the cost

of acquisition of that customer the money that you're getting back and the the payback that you have over time still makes a a lot of sense that is typically one of the more challenging businesses to make profitable because the volume matters more than the individual customer. >> Mhm. Mhm. So, uh you mentioned earlier that Zuba leans into compliance first and I understand you know you look to work with licensed partners in country. So, can you talk about how you vet those partners, what you look for, what does your ideal partner look like?

Yeah, I I think there are often a variety of different gates that a business might have for assessing a partner, right? You might say, look, you know, in terms of balance sheet risk and liquidity, you need to be doing, you know, x million in volume or, you know, you need to be around for like you been around for more than 5 years or something along those lines or, you know, you need to have x number of credible partners. We need to trust that you're someone in the ecosystem um to be able to work with. >> Yeah. Or, you know, maybe you've survived a full credit cycle, you know. Exactly right. Like we know you're not going to go bust, right? Like you know like are you insured? Do you have insurance? You know what what happens if you guys do something wrong? Can I get

my money back? These these are questions that you know we we've got to ask and we and we do ask, right? Um the the reality is that you can never truly 100% know. And no system in the world is foolproof, fatal proof. It just doesn't exist. But we go through the most rigorous structures and processes that we can to try and reduce that risk because that matters for our customer. Our customer needs to know, right, that the money is going to get paid. Like it's the most fundamental, the most important thing.

Are we obsessed about that one thing in the markets where it's the hardest to do? So blockchain onchain transactions are really fundamentally reinventing the way we do financial services. Not everyone is seeing it in the United States. Um, it's not really apparent in most people's daily life, but as you mentioned, there are places in the world where people deal with volatile currencies and there are capital controls and they look on chain for solutions to problems that have never been solved by the incumbent financial system. So, what's your vision of the

future? think 10 years ahead like are there places where fiat currency will have ceased to be relevant? >> I love this question. Um maybe I'm a pioneer but maybe I'm not a pioneer enough. Um who knows the the in 10 years time we'll see if whether or not my prediction is correct but but I effectively think you're going to have massive interoperability in the world of of fiat and and crypto. Um I I I've just history has shown us that um no system of exchange gets totally and entirely eradicated. It simply evolves and changes and consumer and business behavior will dictate where the fund

flow and the movement will will be. Um my my sense is that increasingly um what will happen is that stable coins will enable again this idea of this permissionless protocol where ultimately uh money is moving in you know on on a cryptographic basis of trust on a ledger that then enables counterparties to move that money more freely without needing to have nostro accounts across different financial institutions. that feels like a fundamental rearchitect um redesign of the way money moves, right? Um that's not to say though that it means everyone's going to be holding USDC, USDT in their, you know, wallets and they're going to be spending that. Maybe they do spend that. Maybe there are

particular use cases, right, where, you know, an immigrant travels abroad and goes somewhere, they've got Nigerian naira or they've got Brazilian array, right? And then and then they're ultimately paying for that um at merchant point of sale and there's an atomic swap happening. It's converting into USDT balance, USDC balance. It's getting paid. The merchant decides whether or not they want to get paid in stable coins or in local currency. Like these, of course, these use cases like massively exist. Um, what will the world look like? I think with AI is going to be a more fundamental change to that world. I think things will be happening at a far more agentic level. I think maybe humans themselves will not be conducting transactions. Perhaps humans themselves might not even be, you know, operating doing real work anymore.

there'll be a different type of work. So, >> we're getting way beyond the scope of the stable pulse here, future of work. But I do have a I want to drill down a little bit on this. Do you see a juicy room in the future for issuance in local currency on chain? So, stable coins denominated in you know there's I don't know how many currencies there are in the world. A couple hundred maybe. um and certainly dozens across the continent of Africa where you're doing business. And so my question is uh can more value stay onchain if those currency pairs exist so people can send remittances in US dollars say to Africa

and uh make the foreign exchange onchain and can that value stay onchain and is there um is there a usefulness of that or do we inevitably still see offramping to fiat in the future? I think offramping will still exist. Uh I I I by no means think it'll it will disappear. Um I think it will just be maybe consolidated with a few more larger players. I do think there is a world 100% where you can have you know local stable coin issuance. It does require widespread adoption though and everyone needs to go on there but might not you need liquidity. you need liquidity, right? But but my view here is that um you know what incentive

truthfully speaking does an economy which has a weak balance of payments, which is a net importer, which is subject to huge fluctuations, which has deep capital controls, what incentive do they have to pumping up their to digitizing their local currency when everybody's going to move out of it? >> Valid. Yeah. Um I do wonder if uh there is a future where there are stronger more stable currencies that um exist as stable coins and then you have a choice right it it's not necessarily just USD it might be a digital euro it may be a digital yuan I don't know but um that could be very interesting where today

the status quo is you know domestic currency and it may be volatile in the future that may become less relevant, but now you have a choice of global reserve currencies. >> Yeah, I I think that's interesting for sure. So, the idea that global reserve currencies are are ultimately going to uh be one of either the euro or the or the dollar. Um I think the euro today is the second largest reserve currency in the world. Um and then you have the WAN, right? And that that that see that for me is probably the most um interesting uh conversation, right? Cuz if you look at China today, it has over 40 bilateral currency swap agreements with nations

across the world. It has um it's the the its interbank settlement system already set up um with over 100 over 100 different countries. Um it is ultimately already operating in a way which is enabling you instant settlement. And when you think about it, right, like the US has left the emerging markets and China has entered the emerging markets. And when you're talking about globalization and fast urbanizing populations and where money will settle and where that money clears, it's not it's not going to clear in USD unless you have this increasing dollarization, right, with through stable coins and people moving into it. Um, so you know, if you're looking even between these global reserve currencies and what they could what they could be, there is, you

know, today it's the dollar, but you know, I I see no reason actually why it couldn't be the one or or I mean unlikely to be the euro that, you know, they they sort of need to relax with the regulation. >> Okay, let's finish on one more leadership question. What are you looking for in the team that you build at Zuba and how do you keep them motivated? Um I'll start in in re in reverse. Um how we keep them motivated is that um we are tackling the hardest infrastructure problem in fintech today. I believe the market that we have chosen has the highest remittance costs of anywhere in the world. It struggles from huge regul regulatory challenges. In some cases there is no regulation which governs the

activities in which you're trying to to perform. It struggles from huge amounts of political risk and and governmental instability. So it's hard to build infrastructure that lasts the test of time. You have you have an economy which is still heavily impoverished and so you need people to be able to to to contribute to that economy to grow it to change the balance of payments. We've chosen the hardest market and the hardest infrastructure in the world. You know for the most rockstar people who have the biggest minds who have the like who are hardcore who want to solve real problems and change the world. This is exactly the problem to be solving. And that's an easy sell to anyone who likes hard things. Then how do you keep them motivated? Right? like you know how the like what do we do to find that to find

the the right talent. Um I think number one is is and and and it will always be the case for us is is our culture and our values. So you know number one is it's be unreasonable. The problem we're solving requires an extraordinary outcome. Therefore it requires an extraordinary input. Uh number two stay sharp. There are countless number of people who I meet who are not in the details of anything. Right? You ask them what a virtual account is. You get 10 different descriptions which mean absolutely nothing. Right? like people don't understand what they're solving. You have many entrepreneurs building on the space and they truly don't understand. That's why these conversations are so fundamentally important and we want a team that's involved and embedded in the detail who's actually gone to Computer Village in Lagos who's actually spoken to the merchant and who's actually tried to

facilitate the trade directly. And then I think the the third and most important thing for us is being known for our obsession. And what that means is we are people who fundamentally care above everything to solve the problem. and we will go to the ends of the earth to go and solve it. And you know, for me, these are the types of people that we want to be working with because we know they can never be stopped. >> I think I can sum it up. Passion. You're looking for passion. So, if you're a fixer and you want to work in international money movement, >> reach out to Josiah.

>> Absolutely. And and passion is infectious, right? Like it tickles you from the inside and, you know, makes you jump up with glee and you want to go attack things, right? Um I I I we we regularly play football as a team actually on on Monday evenings and you know on that pitch you see some of the most competitive and fierce fighters anywhere in the world. I truly believe that we have the best team in the world and it's only a matter of time before I I hope at least the emerging markets will see it. >> When you move to the US, are you still going to call it football? >> Yeah, may maybe then it's it's soccer. You know, we've got to adapt to our local environments, but the the the Britain we might still say it's football. Josiah Senu, founder of Zuba.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you on the stable pulse.