The news
- ViFi Labs has acquired Onramp, a leading stablecoin payment provider in Africa.
- The acquisition aims to tap into a $540 billion annual institutional stablecoin market.
- Onramp operates in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania, with 25,000+ users.
ViFi Labs, a decentralised stablecoin protocol building on-chain foreign currency exchange venues, has acquired OneRamp, a stablecoin payments platform serving users in Africa. The move is part of a broader strategy to dominate the $540 billion institutional stablecoin market across Africa and Latin America (LATAM).
Founded by Ugandan entrepreneurs Elias Hezron Opio and Jovan Mwesigwa, OneRamp simplifies how people spend stablecoins by enabling direct payments to mobile money platforms and bank accounts. The company currently operates in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania and serves more than 25,000 users with an annualised revenue run rate of $1.2 million.
“Onramp is a source of customer acquisition wherever the markets are being made,” said Varoun Hanooman, co-founder of ViFi Labs. “ViFi’s goal is to be the best place for market making in the future. But One Ramp is a distribution game. It makes it as easy to access all those venues from a single interface.”
ViFi Labs believes that the future of foreign exchange lies in decentralised infrastructure. Its acquisition of Onramp gives it access to growing institutional stablecoin adoption in Africa and LATAM.
According to ViFi co-founder Tony Olendo, the OneRamp acquisition will help provide distribution and access to the ViFi protocol at launch.
Beyond geographic expansion, the acquisition has strategic implications for integration with larger crypto ecosystems. OneRamp is already in line to become the go-to payment provider for Africa in Coinbase’s new Base App, giving users seamless access to mobile money and banking integrations across the continent.
Though the company remains platform-agnostic, its potential to scale within Base offers a new avenue for growth.
For ViFi, the deal isn’t just about expanding market share — it’s about positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for on-chain FX in regions where stablecoins already play a vital role in commerce, savings, and cross-border remittances.
