How to eliminate prefunding in African payouts
Prefunding exists because local payout rails must be paid from cleared local balances, so providers ask you to park a float in every market before you can pay anyone. You eliminate it by moving the funding decision to execution time: hold treasury in USDC or USDT, fund each payout run just-in-time at a quoted rate, and let settlement clear in minutes instead of banking days. The floats go to zero and the capital goes back on your balance sheet.
Why prefunding exists at all
Mobile money and instant bank rails pay out in seconds, but they pay from cleared local currency. The traditional fix is to make you clear it in advance: a working balance in each market, sized to your best guess of next week's volume. One market means one float. Twelve markets means twelve floats, twelve forecasts, and twelve ways to be wrong in both directions: too little and payouts stall, too much and capital sits dead.
What the float actually costs
| The cost | How it shows up | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Trapped capital | A balance parked per market, sized to peak volume, idle between runs | Balance sheet |
| FX exposure | Local-currency floats revalue every day you hold them | P&L |
| Forecast labour | Someone predicts volume per corridor per week, then files emergency top-ups | Operations |
| Hours mismatch | Bank-hours top-ups feeding rails that pay out at any hour | Failed or delayed payouts |
Just-in-time funding, defined
The funding decision moves from weeks before the payout to the moment of it. Treasury sits in one asset, USDC or USDT, in your own balance. When a payout run is ready, you fund it: the transfer settles in minutes at any hour on seven supported networks, and converts to the payout currency at a rate returned on the quote, which holds until the quote expires. Until that moment, the money is yours, earning whatever your treasury earns, exposed to nothing.
Fund the run, not the market
Say you pay $200,000 a month across six markets and hold a two-week buffer in each, the common rule of thumb for volatile corridors. That is roughly $100,000 parked across six floats, revaluing in six currencies, before a single payout runs. Funded just-in-time, the same book runs with a parked float of zero: each batch is funded minutes before it executes, and the $100,000 stays in your treasury.
What stays true
You still hold treasury; the point is one asset in your own account instead of many floats in other people's. Each funding leg pays the network fee for the chain you use, published in full on our pricing page, from $0.10 on Base. And quotes expire: the discipline is funding against a quote, so your unit economics are known before anything moves.
The settlement API, specified.
Networks, fees and quote behavior for just-in-time funding, on one page.
Stablecoin settlement API