Unlocking African trade potential with enterprise blockchain

Problem

Cross-border trade in Africa suffers from slow settlements, limited transparency, high fees, and asymmetric information—hindering liquidity management and delaying payments. These inefficiencies tie up working capital, create cash flow uncertainty for businesses, and make it difficult for trading partners to assess risk or build trust. For financial institutions serving the continent, modernizing this fragmented infrastructure is essential to unlocking Africa’s trade potential.

Solution

Standard Bank partnered with Shinhan Bank to pilot a stablecoin-based remittance solution on Hedera, enabling near-instant settlement of cross-border transfers. The pilot demonstrated how blockchain infrastructure can deliver traceable, low-cost transactions with end-to-end visibility—giving both institutions and their customers real-time insight into payment status while dramatically reducing fees and processing times.

Stablecoins have the potential to bring a wide range of benefits to the banking industry, including stability, transparency, security, accessibility, liquidity, and more. We are thrilled to introduce Stablecoin Studio to our project teams. We believe that this accelerator can help us understand the benefits of stablecoins and how they can bring value to our relevant projects.

Jared Lindolent

Product Owner

Building the rails for Africa’s digital economy

Standard Bank, the continent’s largest financial institution by assets, joined the Hedera Council and established Africa’s first Hedera network node in February 2021. By operating this critical infrastructure, Standard Bank gained direct participation in network governance while positioning itself at the forefront of enterprise blockchain adoption. This foundational investment laid the groundwork for digitizing and overcoming long-standing frictions in cross-border trade and payments that have historically constrained African commerce.

Innovation: Stablecoin remittances

In a joint proof‑of‑concept with Shinhan Bank of South Korea, each bank issued stablecoins pegged to their national currency. Transfers settled in under a minute for under $0.50, offering trackability and dramatically reduced costs compared to traditional methods. By embedding DLT into its infrastructure, Standard Bank is strategically positioned to support future CBDC integration, tokenized assets, and broader digital payment mechanisms—leading Africa’s digital transformation in trade finance.

Why Hedera

Hedera removes the need for intermediaries that traditionally slow down cross-border transactions, ensuring data integrity, instant confirmation, and transparency across all transaction parties. Every transfer is recorded on an immutable, auditable ledger that all participants can trust—eliminating the reconciliation delays and information gaps that plague legacy systems.

Its enterprise-grade performance made Hedera the ideal foundation for Standard Bank’s digital trade ambitions. The network delivers high throughput and finality in seconds, while maintaining low, predictable fees that don’t fluctuate with market conditions. Hedera’s energy-efficient consensus mechanism also aligns with Standard Bank’s sustainability commitments, offering a responsible path to blockchain adoption without the environmental concerns associated with other networks.