Paying an overseas supplier still means jumping through more hoops than it should for most African businesses. A wire transfer here, a currency conversion there, and days of waiting before an
Paying an overseas supplier still means jumping through more hoops than it should for most African businesses. A wire transfer here, a currency conversion there, and days of waiting before an invoice actually clears. CLEA thinks it has found a shortcut to this decade-long challenge.
The Lagos-based, stablecoin-powered cross-border payments platform has launched Vendor Payments, a new feature that lets business customers pay international suppliers, vehicle auction platforms and shipping companies directly from their CLEA accounts without leaving the platform to initiate a separate transfer.
The rollout comes six months after the startup emerged from stealth in December 2025, a period in which the company says it has processed more than $20 million in transaction volume. Vendor Payments, which has been running in pilot, has already been adopted by over 50 businesses, according to the company, an early signal that supplier payments are a pain point CLEA’s existing customer base wants solved.
Vendor Payments: simplifying cross-border payments How CLEA’s Vendor Payments workHere is how it works: customers select a supported vendor, enter a payment reference such as a buyer number, lot number or invoice number, and authorise the transaction. Because vendor information is preconfigured on the platform, CLEA says payments complete instantly rather than sitting in the multi-day limbo typical of traditional cross-border transfers. Vehicle auction platforms Copart and IAA are among the first vendors supported, reflecting how much of its early volume likely comes from Nigeria’s car-import trade, though the company has not disclosed a full breakdown of vendor usage.
Sheriff Adedokun, CLEA’s founder and chief executive, framed the launch as part of a broader ambition to move beyond payments into full trade infrastructure. “African businesses are increasingly trading across borders, but managing international supplier payments remains unnecessarily fragmented. At CLEA, we’re building more than a payments platform; we’re building the financial infrastructure businesses need to trade globally with confidence. Vendor Payments is another step in that journey, giving businesses a faster, simpler and more transparent way to pay trusted suppliers and trading partners while focusing on growing their operations.”
For now, Vendor Payments is restricted to eligible, verified CLEA business customers and supports USD payments to selected suppliers in the United States only. Customers fund their accounts in naira, access foreign currency through the platform, and complete the international payment in what the company describes as a single experience, collapsing what is typically a three- or four-step process involving separate FX and transfer providers into one.
Sheriff Adedokun, founder and CEO of CLEA The company says it plans to expand the vendor network over time, adding more suppliers and payment destinations, along with tools for discovering vendors, managing invoices and handling recurring international payments. Whether that expansion moves beyond the US and beyond the auction and shipping niches Vendor Payments is currently targeted and will be the more telling test of how far CLEA can stretch a stablecoin rail into a genuine trade infrastructure business.
CLEA is not alone in chasing this particular business vertical. A cluster of African stablecoin-payment startups, including Ivorypay and pawaPay, have made similar bets over the past year that stablecoin settlement can outcompete legacy correspondent banking on speed and cost for cross-border business payments.
Vendor Payments gives CLEA a narrower, more concrete wedge into that market: rather than positioning itself as a generic FX or remittance layer, it is going after the specific, recurring pain of paying named suppliers, a segment where preconfigured vendor rails could prove sticky if adoption holds beyond the pilot’s 50 businesses.
Also read:“FX access, not appetite, is choking African trade”: understanding CLEA’s Adedokun bets on stablecoins
