Kenyan fintech startup, Pretium, stands at the forefront of Africa’s evolving digital payments landscape tackling a long-standing limitation in the crypto ecosystem, the usability in everyday transactions.

Founded in 2024, the company is building a stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure that allows users to seamlessly spend digital currencies like USDT and USDC on routine expenses such as groceries, rent, and fuel, without the need for cumbersome conversions.

The idea was born out of a personal frustration experienced by its CEO and co-founder, Derrick Bundi, who, despite being paid in stablecoins, found himself unable to use them directly for daily needs.

“Why couldn’t a digital asset designed for value transfer be used for everyday expenses?” Bundi questioned, highlighting a gap that forced users into inefficient peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges.

Today, Pretium is attempting to bridge that gap, connecting blockchain-based assets with Africa’s mobile money and banking systems in a way that brings crypto closer to real-world utility.

What is Pretium, What It Does, and the Problems It Solves

Pretium is a payment infrastructure company that integrates stablecoins with traditional financial systems across Africa. Its core mission is to make digital currencies not just tradable assets, but practical tools for everyday commerce.

The startup emerged from a critical inefficiency in the crypto space, while stablecoins are designed for seamless value transfer, they are often difficult to spend directly in real-world scenarios.

Bundi’s experience underscores this challenge. Despite earning in USDT, he had to rely on P2P platforms to convert his funds into local currency before making payments.

“To make matters worse, most P2P merchants were unwilling to process small USDT transactions and those who did often offered poor exchange rates, making the experience both inefficient and costly,” he explained.

This friction, common among crypto users in Africa, creates barriers to adoption and limits the practical value of digital assets. While many competitors focus on facilitating the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, commonly referred to as on-ramps and off-ramps, Pretium is targeting a more ambitious goal: enabling direct usage.

“Pretium takes a different approach, bridging that gap by enabling direct, everyday spending with stablecoins,” Bundi said.

How Pretium Works: Step-by-Step Breakdown

Pretium operates through a dual-product model designed to serve both individual users and businesses, effectively creating a seamless bridge between crypto and fiat systems.

At the consumer level, users interact with a mobile application that allows them to pay for everyday expenses using stablecoins. Whether it is shopping, paying rent, buying fuel, or settling school fees, the app facilitates transactions by converting digital assets into local currency in real time behind the scenes.

As Bundi noted, “individuals use stablecoins to pay directly for everyday expenses such as shopping, groceries, fuel, rent, and school fees.”

For businesses, Pretium offers a B2B API that integrates directly into payment systems. This allows companies to accept stablecoins while receiving settlements in local currencies, or to move funds across borders efficiently.

“Partners tap into our payment protocol, B2B API, to access stablecoin-to-fiat liquidity and vice versa, as well as last-mile payouts, without the hassle of integrating multiple PSPs or having siloed funds in different markets,” Bundi explained.

This structure effectively removes the need for multiple intermediaries, simplifies cross-border transactions, and enhances liquidity across fragmented African payment systems.

Traction and Revenue Generation Method

Since its launch, Pretium has demonstrated notable traction, signaling strong demand for its solution. The startup has processed over US$6 million in transaction value, with more than 40 businesses leveraging its B2B APIs for payments across the continent.

Additionally, its consumer app has attracted approximately 49,000 users who rely on it for daily transactions.

The company’s growth trajectory appears promising, with Bundi stating that Pretium is “on track to surpass US$10 million in transaction value soon, driven by strong growth over the past few months.”

Currently operational in six African countries, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the startup is pursuing rapid expansion into additional markets.

In terms of monetisation, Pretium generates revenue by applying a fee on the exchange spread during transactions. This means it earns a margin when converting stablecoins into local currencies, a model commonly used in foreign exchange and payment processing services.

Why What Pretium is Doing Matters

Pretium’s approach addresses a critical gap in Africa’s digital economy by making stablecoins functionally equivalent to local currencies in everyday use. This has significant implications for financial inclusion, cross-border trade, and the broader adoption of digital assets.

By enabling direct spending, the startup reduces reliance on informal P2P markets, which are often plagued by inefficiencies, poor pricing, and trust issues. It also simplifies cross-border payments, a persistent challenge in Africa due to fragmented financial systems and high transaction costs.

In doing so, Pretium positions itself as a key enabler of a more integrated and efficient financial ecosystem.

However, the company’s path is not without challenges. Regulatory uncertainty remains a major hurdle, as many African countries lack clear frameworks for digital assets.

“In many of our target markets, there are still no clear laws governing the use of stablecoins and digital assets for payments, which creates uncertainty around compliance, partnerships with financial institutions and long-term scalability,” Bundi noted.

Despite this, there are encouraging signs of progress. Countries such as Kenya, Rwanda, and Ghana are actively working toward establishing regulatory frameworks for digital assets. While this momentum is positive, Bundi cautioned that inconsistent requirements across markets continue to pose operational difficulties.

Talking Points

Pretium is tackling a genuinely important friction point in Africa’s crypto economy, usability, but its model sits on a knife edge between innovation and structural fragility.

On the positive side, enabling direct spending of stablecoins is a logical evolution beyond the saturated “on/off-ramp” space, and if executed well, it could meaningfully reduce reliance on inefficient P2P markets while improving cross-border liquidity.

However, the core challenge is not technical but systemic, Pretium is effectively abstracting a complex chain of conversions, compliance obligations, and liquidity management into a seamless user experience, which is expensive, regulation-heavy, and difficult to scale across fragmented African markets.

Its reliance on exchange spreads for revenue may also become a weakness, thin margins, price volatility, and competition from better-capitalised fintechs or even traditional banks entering the space could quickly erode profitability.

More critically, its success is heavily contingent on regulatory clarity that does not yet exist; a single adverse policy shift in key markets could disrupt operations overnight. Overall, while Pretium’s vision is compelling and directionally correct, it is operating in a space where execution risk, regulatory uncertainty, and unit economics could easily outpace its current momentum.

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