Kora One Rail Adds USDT and USDC Stablecoin Payments

In Short

• One Rail is Kora’s new stablecoin payments product for merchants in Africa.
• It supports USDT and USDC at launch.
• Businesses can collect, hold, convert, and settle stablecoins alongside local currencies.

What Happened

Kora announced One Rail, a stablecoin payments layer that plugs into the same tools merchants already use for local currency payments. Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to stay close to a real currency, in this case the US dollar.

Kora says One Rail allows businesses to accept stablecoins from customers, hold balances in “digital dollars”, convert to local currency, and pay out to bank accounts using Kora’s existing payout network. The launch was announced in Dubai.

At the start, One Rail supports Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, the two largest dollar-pegged stablecoins. Kora said it plans to add more dollar-backed tokens based on customer demand, and based on regulatory and operational readiness.

Kora is positioning the product as an add-on for existing merchants and developers. That means teams can access stablecoin features via the same APIs, dashboards, and reconciliation tools they already use. Reconciliation is the process of matching incoming payments to orders and invoices so the books balance.

The initial release covers collections, payouts, and treasury functions such as wallet creation, payment confirmation, and settlement. Kora noted that settlement currently relies on manual workflows, which suggests full automation and instant conversion may still be in progress.

Why It Matters

Cross-border settlements in Africa can take days, and FX conversion costs can be high. Many businesses also struggle to access dollars in local banking systems.

By letting merchants hold and move USD-linked stablecoins, Kora is pitching One Rail as a faster route for cross-border trade and supplier payments, and as a hedge against local currency swings.

Key open questions for operators include pricing, conversion fees, and which countries and local currencies are supported for settlement. Kora has not shared those details yet, and it has not named early customers.