This week at Africa Crypto News, payment processing giant MasterCard announced it will use USDC to expand its Global Digital Settlements partnership with Circle. Like the Tether USDT, USDC is one of the most popular, allowing for inexpensive and instant global value transfer.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, Invastor has launched an education program aimed at political stakeholders and leaders. Over the past few years, Kenya has taken steps to create clarity in regulations with crypto. The Virtual Asset Service Provider Bill (VASP) is being considered in Congress and could ultimately be enacted by law.

Meanwhile, international law enforcement agency Interpol has implemented a major operation to seize fraudulent Bitcoin and crypto mining operations across the continent. Crypto-mining is energy-intensive and farms can be difficult to run in areas with priorities that enhance critical services, such as healthcare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8biv8ensnla

Explore the story that will make headlines for the continent this week:

Africa Crypto News: MasterCard expands its partnership with Circle

MasterCard, an international credit and debit card service provider, has it Expansion Partnerships with circles to promote payments in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.

This agreement will allow MasterCard users in these regions to resolve transactions using USDC and to purchase in some cases. Top Solanamime Coin. Payment processors and card issuers are leveraging trustworthy global infrastructure for this initiative.

Stablecoins provide a relatively secure way to handle crypto as their value is fixed on stable assets such as USD and Euro. MasterCard benefits crypto users by linking blockchain native assets with traditional Fiat systems. Sol ▲2.15% Owner.

(Source: TradingView Sol USDT)

Dimitrido Tosis, president of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, explained the benefits of the partnership as follows:

“This is a key move for Mastercard, and our strategic goal is to integrate stubcoin into the financial mainstream by investing in infrastructure, governance and partnerships.

The news is a major milestone for the blockchain sector and is moving away from its early reputation as a hub of fringe assets towards mainstream adoption.

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Kenya Crypto News: Invastor is investing in education programs

Available at Digital Finance Platform Infastor announcement An education initiative aimed at Kenyan lawmakers. The program provides lawmakers at various government levels with small amounts of crypto to manage as part of their portfolio and provides guidance on the handling of digital assets. The best cipher to buyLike Bitcoin ETH ▲2.94%.

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Invastor is making this effort to help lawmakers better understand crypto assets and enact appropriate laws for the sector. Kenya’s Parliament is currently considering the Virtual Asset Service Provider Bill (VASP).

Kenya’s approach to digital assets is evolving. From attention to leadership, support blockchain innovation, stable development, exploring Bitcoin reserves.

With national policies regarding the Virtual Asset and Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) draft bill, we have… pic.twitter.com/xqfphmvqq7

– Hon. William Cabogo (@honkabogo) July 10, 2025

Invastor CEO Chris Esukumo highlighted the importance of Kenya’s digital payments and the potential for crypto growth. Esukumo pointed out that Kenya has shown the world how to jump legacy systems with mobile money. He now expects they will do the same thing in cryptography.

Binance has also participated in stakeholder engagement in the VASP bill, strengthening the importance of Kenya as a crypto hub.

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Zambia and Angola Crypto News: Interpol cracks down on Zambia and Angola scams

It’s located at Interpol carried out A major seizure targeting crypto fraudsters and illegal operators across the continent, focusing on Zambia and Angola to arrest cybercriminals.

Zambian authorities have shut down a massive crypto investment scam that has scamned an estimated $300 million victim. The surgery led to 15 people being arrested. Additionally, there was domain and bank account seizure to prevent further fraud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukd82gnveu

In Angola, authorities have shut down around 45 illegal crypto mining operations using electricity designated in vulnerable areas. Crypto miners face challenges in electricity consumption as they are unable to meet their needs in some regions.

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Circle has launched a unified cross-chain infrastructure that enables businesses to access USDC balances across multiple blockchains.

An Aug. 19 announcement labeled the new product as Gateway, a system that addresses liquidity fragmentation issues that force companies to pre-position funds across chains and manage complex rebalancing operations.

Gateway combines smart contract infrastructure with an off-chain attestation service to create a single USDC balance accessible on Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Polygon PoS, and Unichain.

Additional chains, including Circle’s Arc, will receive support in future releases.

The platform targets payment service providers, exchanges, custodians, digital wallets, and DeFi trading firms that require efficient cross-chain USDC management without operational overhead.

Gateway maintains non-custodial design principles, ensuring depositor control over USDC holdings at all times.

Fund access requires both user signatures and Gateway attestations, preventing unauthorized movements or burns. The system includes trustless withdrawal mechanisms allowing users to recover funds after seven days if the Gateway API becomes unavailable.

Unified UX for financial infrastructure

The system operates through a three-step process beginning with USDC deposits into Gateway Wallet contracts on any supported blockchain.

After deposit finalization, Gateway credits the unified balance and instantly makes funds accessible across all supported chains regardless of the original deposit location.

Users initiate transfers by signing burn intents, which developers submit to the Gateway API for verification and attestation generation.

Once users sign burn intents, corresponding USDC mints execute on destination chains within the subsequent block, providing single-chain experience speeds for cross-chain value transfers.

Among the use cases are payment service providers reducing working capital requirements while exchanges eliminate rebalancing delays.

Additionally, digital wallets display unified USDC balances, and DeFi trading firms deploy capital more efficiently across chains without pre-positioning funds.

Gateway represents Circle’s latest initiative to enhance stablecoin utility following several strategic moves this year.

The company introduced its Refund Protocol in April, establishing a non-custodial dispute resolution system for stablecoin transactions without centralized intermediaries.

Circle also recently announced Arc, its enterprise-focused layer-1 blockchain scheduled for public testnet between September and December 2025.

Arc will serve as high-performance infrastructure for stablecoin payments, foreign exchange, and capital markets applications while supporting USDC as its default gas token and offering sub-second settlement finality.

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The international arm of Ant Group, the company backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, plans to bring Circle’s USDC stablecoin onto its proprietary blockchain.

The rollout will start once U.S. regulators certify the dollar-pegged token under the new federal rules, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the deal.

The move would give USDC a link to a network that processed more than $1 trillion in global payments last year, a third of them settled on-chain. That scale could make Ant the largest overseas corporate user of a U.S.-issued stablecoin.

Ant International is also applying for stablecoin licenses in Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, according to the report. The group wants regulated digital dollars, central bank digital currencies and tokenized bank deposits to sit side by side on its platform.

The company’s blockchain currently supports tokenized assets from various financial institutions and has reportedly been working with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan.

Circle shares rose nearly 3.8% in pre-market trading to $208.

Circle’s euro-backed stablecoin, EURC, surged to a record supply as mounting U.S. trade tensions and a weakening dollar likely fuel demand for euro-denominated digital assets.

EURC’s supply grew 43% over the past month to 217 million tokens worth $246 million, ranking above Paxos’ Global Dollar (USDG) and below Ripple’s RLUSD by market capitalization, RWA.xyz data shows. Most of the EURC tokens circulate on the Ethereum network, up 35% in a month to 112 million, while Solana saw the fastest, 75% expansion to 70 million tokens. Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2, also saw a 30% growth to 30 million in EURC supply.

The token also experienced an uptick in on-chain activity, with active addresses rising 66% to 22,000 and the monthly transfer volume surpassing $2.5 billion, up 47% in a month, per RWA.xyz.

EURC is currently the largest euro stablecoin on the market, but it lags far behind its dollar-denominated counterparts. Dollar-pegged stablecoins make up 99% of the rapidly growing stablecoin market, led by Circle’s $58 billion USDC and rival Tether’s $143 billion USDT token.

The accelerating growth of EURC could be a sign of growing demand for diversification to euro-denominated digital assets, particularly as global investors navigate increasing economic uncertainties in the U.S. with the Trump administration wide-scale tariff rollout. The greenback weakened 9% against the euro since the start of the year.

Xapo Bank, a Gibraltar-based Bitcoin-focused financial services firm, reported Monday a 50% increase in euro deposit volumes during the first quarter, outpacing the 20% rise in USDC stablecoin deposits. Meanwhile, deposits in USDT declined by over 13%.

“This rapid increase in volume came amidst mounting concern about the future of U.S. dollar primacy and the threat of a U.S. recession as markets braced for Trump’s planned ‘Liberation Day’ in April,” the firm said in the report.

Stablecoin swap volumes between foreign currency pairs on Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges also soared to multi-year highs last week, dominated by the EUR-U.S. dollar pair, Blockworks data showed.

EURC also has likely benefited from Tether’s withdrawal of its euro-backed stablecoin (EURT) with E.U.-wide MiCA regulations going into effect this year, while a number of exchanges delisted USDT for E.U. users to comply with regulations, including Binance at the end of March.

Circle’s USDC, the second-largest stubcoin in the market, rose to a record market capitalization of over $56 billion this week as Stablecoin’s growth showed signs of a resurgence this week.

USDC added $10.2 billion to its market capitalization last month, primarily based on an increase in Defi trading volume, based in Solana. This is more than twice the $4.6 billion growth of USDT from Tether, the largest stubcoin in the market in the same period and the circle’s biggest competitor. USDT still controls the Stablecoin space with a market capitalization of $142 billion.

With the latest growth, USDC surpassed its peak in 2022 and has fully recovered from the 2023 US Regional Bank crisis. At the time, the circle held a portion of the Silicon Valley Bank’s bank deposit stubcoin reserve, struggling with banking runs, and USDC temporarily lost the peg to the US dollar. Many token holders fled to USDT and in May 2023 supported Tether, which exceeded its peak market capitalization in 2022.

Stablecoins are a special type of cryptocurrency with prices fixed on external assets, primarily towards the US dollar. USDT and USDC are widely used for trading on crypto exchanges and serve as important sources of liquidity. Therefore, their expansion of supply is a key indicator of investor demand and overall health in the crypto market.

After a lukewarm period from December to early January, USDT and USDC growth has accelerated over the past few weeks, data shows. Previous growth, including from late October to early December 2023 to April 2024, coincided with sudden gatherings in Bitcoin (BTC) and Altcoin prices.

Accelerating Stablecoin’s growth is just one factor affecting the crypto market, but it provides a positive signal for the health of the entire market amid macro headwinds and price integration.