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Daya adds Tempo as a settlement rail for stablecoin payments

Daya has added a new settlement rail underneath its stablecoin payment flows. Nothing changes in how you send or receive money. Here is what changed underneath, and why it matters.

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Lade Falobi · Product Marketing

· 2 min read

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daya x tempo

In short

  • Daya has added Tempo, a blockchain built specifically for payments, as a settlement rail for stablecoin movement.
  • Settlement on Tempo becomes final in under a second, and network fees are fixed rather than bid for.
  • Nothing changes for Daya customers. Same product, same routing, same support.

What we added

Daya moves money for businesses that operate across African markets and beyond. Local collection and payouts, conversion between local currencies and stablecoins, foreign currency accounts, and cross-border payouts, all in one place.

Today that means local collection and payouts in naira, conversion between NGN, ZAR, GHS, KES and stablecoins, and USD, EUR, GBP, CNY and HKD virtual accounts and payouts.

Underneath all of that sits a question most customers never have to think about: how a payment actually settles once it leaves one account and before it lands in another. We have added Tempo, a blockchain built specifically for payments, as a settlement rail for the stablecoin part of those flows.

Three things Tempo does differently

Most blockchains were built to do many things at once. Tempo was built to move payments. Three of its design choices change what we can offer.

Most networks Tempo What that means for you
Settlement A confirmed transaction can still be reversed if the network reorganises, so payment companies wait for extra confirmations before treating money as received Once confirmed, a transaction cannot be undone, and confirmation takes under a second The window where a payment has been sent but nobody will say it arrived gets much shorter
Network fees You compete with everyone else transacting at that moment, so the cost of the same payment can multiply during a busy hour A set fee, the same whether the network is quiet or busy The cost of moving a payment does not move with somebody else's activity, so it is something we can forecast rather than absorb
Paying the fee You hold a separate token purely to pay for transactions, an asset whose price moves for reasons unrelated to your business Fees can be paid in stablecoins One less volatile asset sitting in the middle of a payments business

Where this sits in a payment

A payment moves in five steps. Only the fourth, settlement, happens on Tempo.

Only one of those five steps changed. That is the point.

What stays the same

This is a rail, not a replacement for anything. If you are a Daya customer, nothing in your product changes. No new screen, no new setting, no new step.

Daya continues to:

  • Decide how each payment is routed
  • Source the liquidity
  • Price the FX
  • Reconcile the movement
  • Answer the support ticket

It is also not our only rail. Different payments settle in different ways depending on the currencies and the destination. Adding Tempo widens the set of routes we can price across rather than narrowing it.

"The businesses we serve do not care which chain a payment settles on. They care whether the money is definitely there, and what it cost to get there. That is what we were choosing for."
Aleph L, Founder and CEO, Daya

What's next

We are extending the integration across more of our stablecoin payment flows, and across more of the currencies we already support.

If you are building on Daya and want to know how this affects a specific corridor or a specific payment type, ask us and we will walk through it.

Move money across African markets and beyond

Daya handles collection, conversion and cross-border payouts through one product or one API. Talk to our team · Read the API documentation

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