LemFi, a Nigerian financial service app that helps users send, receive, and manage money across countries, has partnered with BVNK to move cross-border settlements onto regulated stablecoin rails.
The collaboration is designed to improve the speed and efficiency of international remittances for more than two million LemFi customers across the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and North America, who send money to beneficiaries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Also, the partnership moves LemFi’s cross-border settlement onto regulated stablecoin rails, delivering near-instant value transfers between markets at a fraction of the cost, without changing anything about how customers experience the app.
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Traditionally, cross-border payments have relied on correspondent banking networks and SWIFT infrastructure, processes that often take several days to complete while adding costs at multiple stages.
These inefficiencies have become increasingly evident in the global remittance market, where migrants sending relatively small amounts of money to family members often bear disproportionately high fees.
This has fueled growing interest in alternative settlement technologies, including stablecoins, which enable near-instant value transfer on blockchain networks while reducing reliance on multiple banking intermediaries.
Through the partnership, LemFi will leverage BVNK’s regulated stablecoin infrastructure to settle transactions behind the scenes before disbursing funds in local currencies to recipients.
Speaking on the partnership, Ridwan Olalere, Co-founder and CEO of LemFi, said,
“The money that crosses borders still moves on rails built decades ago, slow, expensive, and quietly taxing the people who can least afford it. We’re rebuilding those rails. Stablecoins let us settle near-instantly and reduce costs; BVNK provides the infrastructure to do so safely and at scale. It’s the start of something bigger; the financial system the diaspora economy should have had all along.”
Also commenting, Chris Harmse, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at BVNK, said,
“Stablecoins are becoming the base layer for how the world moves money, and remittances are one of the clearest places that shift changes lives. LemFi has built deep trust with the communities it serves across Africa, Asia and beyond. Powering their settlement with our infrastructure means faster, cheaper transfers reach real families exactly the kind of impact we built BVNK to deliver.”
BVNK was selected not only for its technology but also for its regulatory credentials. The company operates a compliance-focused enterprise payments platform backed by more than 25 licenses and regulatory approvals across the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, with payment coverage spanning more than 130 countries.
In 2025, BVNK won the best cross-border payment solution and is backed by leading investors including Visa Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global, Raba, amongst others.
The platform’s partnership with LemFi, aligns with a broader transformation in global payments, as stablecoins continue to evolve from cryptocurrency instruments into mainstream financial infrastructure.
Industry estimates show that real-world stablecoin payment volumes reached approximately $7.4 trillion over the past 12 months, while analysts project that stablecoins could account for as much as 20% of the cross-border payments market within the next decade, up from roughly 3% today.
The partnership advances LemFi’s stablecoin strategy unveiled in May 2026, following a strategic investment from Tether aimed at supporting the integration of USD? as a settlement layer across the company’s payment corridors.
Notably, it also forms part of LemFi’s broader strategy to evolve beyond remittances into a full-stack financial platform serving globally mobile communities. The company’s expanding offerings now include payments, savings, credit, and connectivity services.