Key takeaways
ZARU went from listing to global FX pair in seven weeks, with Standard Bank and Absa behind it and Sanlam managing reserves on Arc.
Luno added a few things. A licence, dollar rails and an acquisition in the same window: Bermuda, Meridian and GTXN.
The pattern is repeatable. Malaysia’s ringgit collaboration follows the ZARU structure almost exactly.
What is a settlement stack?
A settlement stack is the set of regulated components needed to move value from one party to another and finish the transaction: a licensed operator, banking partners, a liquid market, and rails that connect them.
No single component is useful alone. A stablecoin with no exchange has nowhere to trade. An exchange with no banking partner cannot settle fiat. A payments rail with no licence cannot operate.
Think of a port. The harbour, customs office, cranes and access roads are built separately, and none of them earns anything until all of them exist. The announcements below are pieces of that port arriving in sequence.
Who owns which piece
Entity | Role in the stack |
|---|---|
The regulated platform: licences, exchange liquidity, dollar access and distribution across its core markets | |
Issuance: ZARU, its reserves, its banking partners and its distribution network | |
Cross-border payments: licensed collection and payout between developed and emerging markets |
The quarter at a glance
Date | Announcement | Entity | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
30 Jul | BlockTower | Professionally managed on-chain liquidity | |
5 Aug | BlockTower | A regulated secondary market for the rand on chain | |
13 Aug | BlockTower | ZARU at point of sale | |
20 Aug | Base and Eezibit | BlockTower | ZARU on a global layer two network |
26 Aug | BlockTower | ZARU on an instant EFT rail | |
31 Aug | Luno | A regulated base outside core markets | |
3 Sept | Luno | US dollar accounts that settle in seconds | |
4 Sept | BlockTower | Institutional distribution across Africa | |
8 Sept | BlockTower | A second tier one bank behind ZARU | |
14 Sept | BlockTower | Discoverability for analysts and treasuries | |
22 Sept | BlockTower | A 24/7 global on-chain FX market for the rand | |
22 Sept | Luno, GTXN | Owned cross-border collection and payout rails | |
25 Sept | Luno | The same model, extended to Malaysia |
Step 1: Give the rand a market (late July to August)
ZARU lists on Luno Global
On 5 August, ZARU listed on Luno Global with two pairs, ZARU/USDT and ZARU/USDC, available in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.
Zaru is a rand stablecoin issued by BlockTower. Each unit is backed one to one by rand held in regulated custody at Standard Bank and attested independently every month.
It gave an institutional grade rand stablecoin a continuous on-chain secondary market on a regulated exchange for the first time. Currency Hub, a regulated crypto asset service provider announced as market maker on 30 July, provides the liquidity.
The first partners were payment rails
Three partners followed in the same month:
MoneyBadger, crypto payments at point of sale (13 August)
Base, the layer two network incubated by Coinbase, alongside distribution partner Eezibit (20 August)
Ozow, one of South Africa’s largest instant electronic funds transfer providers (26 August)
None of these are trading venues. The earliest demand for a rand on chain came from businesses that move money, not businesses that trade it.
Step 2: Earn institutional trust (July to mid September)
With a market in place, the next question any bank, treasurer or regulator asks is who stands behind it. Four answers arrived across the quarter, the first of them before the rand even had a market.
A regulated base in Bermuda
On 31 August, the Bermuda Monetary Authority granted Luno International Ltd a Class F Digital Asset Business licence, covering over the counter trading (including ZARU), global spot markets and wallet infrastructure.
It gives Luno a regulated home outside its core markets in Africa and Asia Pacific, which the institutional services in the rest of this article depend on.
Dollars that settle in seconds
On 3 September, Luno announced a partnership with Meridian, a US regulated digital clearinghouse. Corporate clients receive named US account details. Dollars arriving by ACH, Fedwire or SWIFT are minted into USDC or USDT and settle to the client’s Luno wallet in seconds, rather than the one to three business days a wire typically takes.
Around seven in ten African countries are contending with foreign exchange shortages, according to Meridian’s announcement. For a business in that position, the speed of settlement is the product.
Absa joins Standard Bank behind ZARU
On 8 September, Absa joined ZARU’s banking ecosystem as a second banking partner.
Nothing changes for a customer using ZARU. What changes is the settlement capacity and redundancy underneath it, which is what institutions assess before they commit.
Distribution and discoverability
On 4 September, ZARU went live on Lumetrade, Lumepay’s institutional stablecoin trading infrastructure for corporate clients across Africa. On 14 September it was listed on CoinGecko, the market data aggregator most analysts and treasuries use.
Step 3: Go global in one week (22 to 25 September)
Three announcements, three entities, four days. Together they are the clearest statement yet of what the group is building.
ZARU goes live on Circle’s Arc and StableFX
On 22 September, ZARU went live on Arc, the blockchain built by Circle, the issuer of USDC, and launched on StableFX, Circle’s on-chain foreign exchange platform. ZARU trades against USDC with atomic settlement: both sides settle at the same moment or the trade does not happen. Reserves for the Arc deployment are managed by Sanlam, with BlockTower issuing under its Financial Sector Conduct Authority licence.
Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product Officer at Circle, said StableFX was built “to bring institutional FX on-chain, with atomic settlement, RFQ execution and real liquidity from day one.” James Lanigan, Chief Executive Officer of Luno: “Globally compliant liquidity is the foundation of any serious institutional digital asset strategy.”
The rand now has a 24/7 global FX market against the world’s most widely used regulated stablecoin.
Luno acquires GTXN
On the same day, Luno announced the acquisition of GTXN, a licensed cross-border payments provider operating collection and payout infrastructure between developed and emerging markets. GTXN is led by Dan Kleinbaum, who co-founded Beyonic, a mobile money platform across seven African markets acquired by Onafriq in 2020.
Most cross-border payments into and out of emerging markets pass through a chain of correspondent banks, each adding time, cost and compliance friction. Owning the rails consolidates that flow through a single regulated provider, which is what reduces cost and settlement time on underserved corridors.
Malaysia asks the same question about the ringgit
On 25 September, at the Luno Institutional Digital Asset Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Luno Malaysia signed an intent to collaborate with Halogen Capital and Kenanga Investors to explore a ringgit pegged stablecoin for tokenised fund settlement. Institution only, backed one to one by ringgit in segregated accounts, with Luno handling issuance, redemption and attestations.
It is an exploration under regulatory oversight, not a launch. It is also the ZARU playbook, applied to a second core market.
Why does this matter for cross-border payments?
Because the cost of moving money into and out of emerging markets is mostly a cost of intermediaries, and a regulated stack that holds the licence, the bank relationships, the liquidity and the rails removes several of them at once.
Put the pieces side by side:
A rand stablecoin on its own does not change how a South African importer pays a supplier in Shenzhen.
A rand stablecoin with a liquid USDC market, two banks behind it, a dollar account that settles in seconds and a licensed payout rail at the other end starts to.
None of this is finished. South Africa’s draft capital flow management rules for crypto assets are open for consultation at the time of writing. Luno’s position is that licensed, regulated providers should keep the ability to innovate, and the announcements above are the practical case for it.
What comes next
BlockTower Issuance Platform: A self service platform for approved institutions to mint and redeem ZARU, with a full transaction and audit log, scheduled for early October.
ZARU on the Luno Exchange: Work is under way to bring ZARU pairs to the exchange used by Luno’s retail and professional traders.
GTXN Insights: A series of field notes on how cross-border payments work in practice. Some of it will also appear here under the GTXN tag.
Each of those is a plan rather than an outcome, and dates may move.
About Luno
Luno is a global digital asset and financial infrastructure company, founded in 2013. We give individuals, institutions and businesses secure access to digital assets, investment products, trading, custody, stablecoin infrastructure and cross border settlement.
Nigeria is one of our key markets, alongside the rest of Africa and Asia Pacific. In each of them we offer regulated market access, institutional grade infrastructure and more than a decade of digital asset expertise, so customers can invest, trade, move and manage value with confidence.
