A Nigerian business can send an email to a supplier in China in seconds. But paying that supplier can take days.
Tomiwa “Aleph” Lasebikan encountered that disconnect repeatedly as the head of product at Y Combinator-backed crypto startup Helicarrier, which he co-founded after leaving Microsoft in 2018. Customers who came to the company for crypto services often had a more practical problem: receiving dollars, paying overseas suppliers, and moving money across borders.
Now Lasebikan is betting stablecoins can help solve it. His new startup, Daya, is building a payments platform that helps businesses access dollar liquidity, settle international transactions, and move money across borders using dollar-backed digital currencies. It raised $350,000 from Alliance DAO, a US-based crypto accelerator, in 2025.
The startup is part of a growing list of companies building financial infrastructure around stablecoins, arguing that blockchain-based settlement can do for cross-border payments what the Internet did for communication: help businesses move money more quickly across borders.
Stablecoin as an alternative rail for businesses
