Ivorypay

Ivorypay is a crypto payment infrastructure company headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, founded in 2022. It provides hyper-localised payment rails for businesses operating in Africa, connecting global stablecoin liquidity to local bank accounts and mobile money wallets across 17 African countries. The platform is designed to let African merchants accept international crypto payments without holding volatile digital assets, and to send cross-border payments to suppliers in markets such as China and India at significantly lower cost than traditional wire services.

How It Works

Ivorypay operates as a bidirectional payment layer sitting between global crypto networks and African fiat infrastructure. On the inbound side, merchants integrate via a REST API or no-code tools — QR codes, hosted checkout pages, or payment links — to accept stablecoins from customers anywhere in the world. Once a payment arrives, Ivorypay automatically converts it to the local currency of the merchant's choice (Naira, Kenyan Shilling, Ghanaian Cedi, South African Rand, and others) and settles to a bank account or mobile money wallet. On the outbound side, businesses can send crypto or fiat payouts to suppliers, contractors, or beneficiaries internationally.

The platform uses dynamically assigned virtual bank accounts alongside on-chain addresses, so customers can pay via traditional bank transfers or directly in stablecoins. Webhook notifications provide real-time settlement confirmation without polling.

Ivorypay also operates Duffle, a consumer-facing app that allows individuals to spend crypto as easily as initiating a bank transfer or mobile money payment, extending the infrastructure's reach beyond the merchant layer.

Blockchain and Solana Integration

Ivorypay launched in 2022 as a Solana-native payment gateway — the network's low fees and fast finality made it well-suited to small-value African commerce where margin compression from transaction costs is a decisive factor. The platform has since expanded to a multi-chain architecture. As of 2026, it supports eight or more blockchain networks, with confirmed chains including Solana, Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, Hedera, Lisk, Algorand, and Starknet.

Solana remains a live settlement chain for both USDC and USDT collections. Ivorypay is a member of the Circle Alliance, where its USDC support is listed across Solana, Base, Ethereum, and Hedera — reflecting the protocol's emphasis on stablecoin settlement rather than native token speculation.

In June 2026, Ivorypay became the first company in Africa to launch support for the X402 payment protocol, which uses the HTTP 402 status code to enable machine-to-machine stablecoin transactions. Under X402, an AI agent or autonomous application requesting a paid resource can settle payment in stablecoins on-chain within seconds, without human intervention. Ivorypay's X402 implementation covers all five blockchains specified in the initial X402 standard: Base, Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Solana. CEO Oluwatobi Ajayi described the rationale: "X402 extends payments to machines. As AI agents transact for businesses, they need instant settlement, minimal costs, and cross-border capability."

Key Features

Unified API: A single integration point handles crypto collection, fiat collection via virtual bank accounts, outbound crypto payouts, and fiat payouts. Merchants avoid building separate integrations for each rail.

Automatic conversion: Incoming stablecoins are converted to local currency without merchants needing to manage crypto custody or foreign exchange manually.

Compliance infrastructure: Ivorypay includes automated KYC onboarding and real-time AML monitoring, reducing compliance overhead for fintech and NGO customers operating in high-scrutiny environments.

Chargeback elimination: Because on-chain crypto transactions are irreversible, Ivorypay markets the platform as chargeback-free — a meaningful consideration for African e-commerce operators exposed to payment fraud via card networks.

Multi-platform availability: The Duffle consumer app is available on Android, iOS, and web.

Supported Assets and Pricing

The platform accepts USDT and USDC as its primary settlement assets, alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ivorypay publishes transparent pricing: crypto collection is charged at 1% per transaction capped at $25; crypto payouts run at 0.15% per transaction; fiat collection starts at 1.5% per transaction (country-dependent); and fiat payouts in Nigeria are 1% per transaction. The company states fees are 90% lower than traditional cross-border processors. The first 500 static wallet addresses are free, with additional addresses at $0.10 each. Volume-based pricing is available for high-throughput merchants.

Ivorypay's 2022 whitepaper described an IVRY native token intended for transactions and staking, alongside an NFT storefront component. The current product documentation and website do not foreground the IVRY token, with the platform's public messaging centered on USDC and USDT settlement.

Scale and Markets

Ivorypay has processed more than $500 million in total payment volume and serves more than 16,000 merchants across 17 African countries. Its primary markets are Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. The platform targets three customer segments: global brands seeking multi-country African payment acceptance without local entity requirements; NGOs and humanitarian organizations collecting donations and distributing aid; and fintech companies embedding crypto payment rails into remittance apps, gaming platforms, payroll systems, and marketplace products.

Sub-Saharan Africa recorded approximately $205 billion in crypto value transacted in the 2024–2025 period, and Nigeria alone accounted for $92.1 billion of that volume, reflecting the structural demand Ivorypay aims to address.

Team and Investors

Ivorypay was co-founded by Oluwatobi Ajayi, who serves as CEO. The company has raised funding from Hedera (strategic investment in 2025 with a board advisory seat), Blockchain Founders Fund, CV VC, Starkware, Rou Capital, BFF Capital, and Kaleo Ventures. Google and Alchemy are listed among its partners. Hedera's investment was accompanied by an expanded technical integration, with Hedera's network added as a settlement chain alongside Ivorypay's existing blockchain roster.

Solana Fit

Ivorypay's Solana integration is structural rather than incidental. The platform originated on Solana, leverages Solana-native USDC through its Circle Alliance membership, and explicitly includes Solana in its X402 machine-payment implementation. For Solana ecosystem participants, Ivorypay represents one of the few production-scale payment gateways converting on-chain Solana activity into fiat settlement across African banking and mobile money networks — a practical bridge between the network's stablecoin liquidity and the continent's predominantly cash and mobile-money economy.