Canza Finance hits $131 million transaction milestone
Canza Finance, a fintech company operating in Africa, reported on January 6, 2026 that it has processed over $131 million in cumulative transactions using the Aptos blockchain. That’s a pretty significant jump—about 300% growth from the previous quarter, which suggests something is working well with their approach.
I think what’s interesting here isn’t just the number itself, but what it represents. African businesses have been dealing with expensive cross-border payments for years, with fees sometimes reaching 8.9% per transaction. That’s much higher than global averages. Canza’s model using stablecoins on blockchain aims to bring those fees down to around 1%, which could actually make a difference for small businesses trying to trade internationally.
Aptos blockchain as infrastructure choice
The choice of Aptos as their underlying technology seems deliberate. Aptos has become the fourth largest Layer-1 blockchain by USDT circulation, with about $830 million worth of the stablecoin on its network. More importantly for the African context, transaction fees average less than $0.0008. That matters when you’re dealing with the kind of high-volume, low-value transactions that characterize mobile commerce in many African markets.
Mobile money is huge in Africa—we’re talking about $562 billion in transactions back in 2020. So having infrastructure that can handle lots of small transactions without eating into margins makes sense.
Introducing AI-powered payment protocol
Beyond the transaction volume, Canza also launched something called the Canza Autonomous Payment Protocol, or CAPP. This is an AI-driven system designed specifically for Africa’s fragmented payment landscape. Different countries, different currencies, different payment providers—it’s a mess that makes cross-border commerce difficult.
Canza claims CAPP can reduce processing fees by up to 90% while settling payments in under a minute. If that’s accurate, it would represent a major improvement over current systems. The AI component is supposed to handle routing and optimization automatically while still complying with local regulations, which is no small task given how varied those regulations can be across the continent.
Broader context of blockchain in Africa
This development fits into a larger trend. African blockchain companies raised $474 million in 2022, which was a 429% increase from the previous year. That’s the highest growth rate for any region globally, which tells you something about where things might be heading.
Canza itself was founded in 2019 by Pascal Ntsama and Oyedeji Oluwoye, and they’ve raised about $5.5 million from investors including Polychain Capital and Protocol Labs. Their product suite goes beyond just payments—they also operate Baki, an exchange that lets businesses trade African currencies against dollar stablecoins at official central bank rates.
What strikes me about this whole situation is how practical it seems. There’s less focus on speculative crypto assets and more on using blockchain technology to solve actual problems in African commerce. The high transaction volume suggests businesses are finding value in the solution, not just testing it out.
Of course, scaling any financial technology in Africa comes with challenges. Infrastructure varies widely between urban and rural areas, regulatory environments can change quickly, and building trust takes time. But the numbers here—both the transaction volume and the funding growth in the sector—suggest something is shifting.
It’s not about revolutionizing everything overnight. It’s more about providing tools that work within existing systems while offering clear advantages. Lower fees, faster settlements, easier cross-border transactions—these are tangible benefits that businesses can measure directly against their bottom line.
Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing this kind of growth. When technology solves real problems in ways that make economic sense, adoption tends to follow.
