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LemFi, the London-headquartered financial platform, has partnered with enterprise stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK to move its cross-border settlement onto regulated stablecoin rails.
The partnership delivers near-instant value transfers between markets at a fraction of traditional costs, without changing anything about how customers experience the LemFi app.
The deal addresses an ongoing problem: international remittances still move through correspondent banking and SWIFT chains that can take days to settle and add cost at every hop.
The global average cost of sending remittances is 6.36%, says the company, which is more than twice the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal target of 3% by 2030.
With BVNK’s infrastructure, settlement is routed over regulated stablecoin rails behind the scenes, then paid out in local currency at the destination.
“The money that crosses borders still moves on rails built decades ago, slow, expensive, and quietly taxing the people who can least afford it. We’re rebuilding those rails,” said Ridwan Olalere, co-founder and CEO of LemFi. “Stablecoins let us settle near-instantly and reduce costs; BVNK provides the infrastructure to do so safely and at scale. It’s the start of something bigger; the financial system the diaspora economy should have had all along.”
LemFi currently serves two million customers who send money between the UK, Europe, Australia, and North America and their beneficiaries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The upgrade is invisible to users, who never touch a stablecoin, hold a crypto balance, or leave their local currency, says the company. The technology operates in the background, capturing the efficiency of stablecoins while maintaining the trust, simplicity, and compliance that customers depend on.
BVNK operates a compliance-first platform with more than 25 licences and regulatory approvals across the UK, Europe, and the US, and coverage in more than 130 countries. Its infrastructure already powers stablecoin payments for some of the world’s largest enterprises.
“Stablecoins are becoming the base layer for how the world moves money, and remittances are one of the clearest places that shift changes lives,” said Chris Harmse, co-founder and chief business officer at BVNK. “LemFi has built deep trust with the communities it serves across Africa, Asia and beyond. Powering their settlement with our infrastructure means faster, cheaper transfers reach real families.”
The partnership operationalises the stablecoin settlement strategy LemFi set out in May 2026 when Tether made its strategic investment, and rides a broader shift as stablecoins expand from the margins of crypto into mainstream payment infrastructure.
Real-world stablecoin payment volumes reached $7.4 trillion over the last 12 months, and analysts expect stablecoins to grow from around 3% of the cross-border payments market to as much as 20% within a decade.
LemFi’s new deal is a key step in its move from a remittance company to a full financial platform for people who are globally mobile. The announcement comes a couple of week after acquiring London-based investment platform Wealth8.
This platform offers payments, credit, savings, and connectivity. The deal follows a successful year, during which LemFi made London its global headquarters, backed by a $134 million investment in the UK.
The company is also expanding its regulatory presence in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia. Stablecoin settlement will gradually be introduced in LemFi’s markets, one at a time.
