Clea wants to make cross-border payments seamless for Nigerian businesses

More than 200,000 used vehicles are imported into Nigeria every year, many of them sourced from auction platforms in the United States, Canada, and Belgium. 

These marketplaces give dealers and entrepreneurs access to vehicles at prices well below retail, making them a critical part of Nigeria’s automotive import ecosystem. But securing a winning bid is only half the battle. Paying for it is often far more complicated.

Nigeria’s foreign exchange constraints mean banks tightly ration dollar allocations, typically capping international transactions at around $10,000 per day for businesses. 

For vehicle importers, those limits can delay payments for days or even weeks, leading to higher port storage fees, strained supplier relationships, or, in the worst cases, losing purchased vehicles to buyers who can settle faster.

It’s a challenge Sheriff Adedokun knows firsthand. Before founding Clea, Adedokun worked as a software engineer and ran a vehicle import business and an e-commerce business on the side. His experience navigating cross-border payments exposed the inefficiencies that plagued not only his business but thousands of other Nigerian importers.

That frustration eventually became Clea, a fintech startup that uses stablecoins to enable Nigerian importers to pay international suppliers within hours instead of days.

The startup has been gaining traction since launch. During a six-month pilot that began in May 2025, Clea processed more than $4 million in transactions. Since emerging from stealth, it has processed over $20 million more, underscoring the demand for faster cross-border payment infrastructure.

Customers just want their payments handled

Although Clea relies on stablecoins as its settlement layer, Adedokun is quick to stress that the technology itself isn’t the product.

“Most businesses don’t care about the infrastructure you’re using,” he said. “They just want to send money to their suppliers in China and make sure the payment gets there on time.”

For companies making cross-border payments, traditional banking infrastructure often involves multiple correspondent banks before funds reach their destination. 

Each intermediary introduces additional processing time, fees, and the possibility of delays caused by compliance reviews or banking hours. Stablecoins reduce much of that friction by allowing value to move almost instantly over blockchain networks before being converted into local currency on either end of the transaction. 

For businesses, the distinction is less about cryptocurrency than operational efficiency. A supplier waiting for payment is rarely concerned with whether funds moved over SWIFT or a blockchain network; they only care that the payment arrives quickly and with minimal cost. 

That does not mean every customer is unaware that Clea uses stablecoins. Users who are already familiar with stablecoins or other cryptocurrencies can still choose to fund their accounts using digital assets. For those customers, stablecoins are not hidden; they are simply one of several payment options available on the platform. 

That philosophy also reflects a broader shift in how virtual assets are being perceived. Once viewed primarily as speculative investment vehicles, stablecoins are increasingly finding a place in mainstream cross-border payments, where speed, cost, and reliability matter more than the underlying technology.

The timing is also favourable. When President Bola Tinubu signed an executive order establishing a Virtual Asset Council, it marked another milestone for an industry that has spent years seeking regulatory legitimacy while steadily gaining grassroots adoption.

The policy follows a turbulent chapter for Nigeria’s crypto ecosystem. In 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria barred commercial banks from facilitating cryptocurrency-related transactions, forcing many businesses and users to operate outside the traditional banking system. More recently, some crypto platforms also faced regulatory scrutiny and temporary account restrictions.

The regulatory landscape is now beginning to shift. One of the council’s first outcomes was the release of taxation guidelines for digital assets by Nigeria’s revenue authorities, signalling a more structured approach to overseeing the sector.

At the same time, market demand has continued to grow. Stablecoins have become an increasingly important tool for cross-border commerce, attracting the attention of local fintech startups eager to build payment infrastructure around them. 

Nigeria has emerged as one of the world’s largest stablecoin markets, processing nearly $22 billion in annual stablecoin volume and drawing the interest of global issuers such as Tether and Ripple.

Much of that growth has been driven by practical rather than speculative use cases. Across Africa, freelancers receive payments from overseas clients, businesses pay suppliers in Asia and Europe, and families send money across borders.

In each case, users often encounter high fees, long settlement times, or limited access to foreign currency through conventional financial institutions. Stablecoins are a workaround that offer dollar-denominated value that can be transferred quickly without depending entirely on correspondent banking networks.

That has created an opportunity for a new generation of fintech startups. Rather than building cryptocurrency exchanges, companies like Clea are embedding stablecoins beneath familiar financial products, betting that customers will ultimately value faster and more reliable payments over the underlying technology.

Retooling banking infrastructure for present realities

Beyond speed and lower costs, accessibility has become one of the biggest drivers of cryptocurrency and, increasingly, stablecoin adoption for cross-border payments in Africa.

For years, businesses across the continent have struggled to access foreign currency through formal banking channels. In Nigeria, persistent dollar shortages mean banks often cannot meet customer demand, forcing importers, manufacturers, and service providers to look elsewhere.

Many turn to the parallel market, where bureau de change operators and informal currency dealers bridge the gap left by the banking system. Even then, moving funds across borders remains subject to banking regulations, compliance checks, and transaction limits that can delay payments and disrupt business operations.

The result is a system where obtaining foreign exchange is only part of the problem. The larger challenge, Adedokun argues, is that the financial infrastructure businesses rely on has failed to keep pace with how modern commerce operates.

“We all know foreign exchange is a problem, but that’s only one layer of it,” Adedokun said. “The bigger issue is the infrastructure businesses have to rely on to access that foreign exchange.”

He argues that increasing the supply of dollars alone would only solve part of the challenge. Unless businesses can access those funds and complete cross-border transactions when they need to, many of the inefficiencies that slow international trade will remain.

For Adedokun, solving the problem is not simply about making more dollars available. It requires rethinking how businesses access and move money across borders. That means designing payment infrastructure around the realities of modern trade while preserving the compliance and anti-money laundering safeguards regulators rightly expect.

In his view, stablecoins are valuable not because they replace regulation, but because they offer a more efficient rail on which compliant cross-border transactions can move. The technology, he argues, gives businesses a payment system that better matches the pace and demands of global commerce without asking them to compromise on regulatory standards.

Clea’s customers today span more than vehicle importers. The company also serves businesses importing machinery, electronics, and other goods that require frequent international payments. 

For now, Clea operates primarily in Nigeria, but Adedokun said the company is preparing to expand into Ghana in the coming months as it looks to replicate its cross-border payment model in other African markets.