Not too long ago, I was having coffee in Nairobi with a friend of mine. He’s a sharp guy who works for one of the big dollar stablecoin companies.
He looked at me and said, “Gideon, I don’t understand the use case for a South African stablecoin.”
My first reaction was: what do you mean? South African money moves in rands. Like you, I buy my groceries and pay my taxes in rands, and like business owners across the country, I pay my staff and suppliers in rands. A rand stablecoin just replaces the rail that money moves on, so you can pay someone instantly and for less, even on a Sunday night or a public holiday.
Now take a payment service provider paying a merchant in Johannesburg. Why would it change rands into a dollar stablecoin and back into rands, paying for a currency trade each way, just to settle a local payment? It makes no sense. If South African money is going to move on these rails, it should move in rands.
Let me be fair to the dollar. If your currency has lost a lot of its value, as the naira and the Argentinian peso have, holding dollars is a rational thing to do. Dollar stablecoins have been a lifeline in those markets. They proved the rail works, and they’ve earned their place.
But where you keep your savings is one question. How you pay the business down the road is another.
This part is personal. I’m South African, and I want to build this country. I don’t want to see South Africa dollarise. I want the money we earn here to stay here and work here.
A stablecoin is a token built to hold a fixed value. The credible ones work like a claim ticket: every token is matched by real money in reserve, and you can hand it back for that money.
ZARsc is a licensed ZAR-backed stablecoin, and we are the issuer. It’s pegged one-to-one: one ZARsc for one rand. You buy it with rands and sell it back for rands into your bank account.
Speed is only part of the story. Blockchains are all fast now. What matters is what happens to the money.
ZARsc moves in seconds at any hour, for next to nothing. The rands behind it never leave South Africa. They sit at Absa; every month Moore, an independent firm, checks them, and we publish the Proof of Reserves. Nobody has to take our word for it.
When ZARsc changes hands, a claim on those rands moves. The rands themselves stay in a South African bank. In other words, a rand stays a rand.
Don’t overthink it. A stablecoin is a rail that sits in the background. Just because it’s called a stablecoin doesn’t mean everything has to flow into dollars.
Now go bigger than South Africa.
Sending a remittance out of South Africa cost an average of 15.65% in Q3 2025, according to the World Bank, the highest in the G20. For a worker sending money home across a border, that’s a tax nobody voted for.
ZARsc is the first of a family of African stablecoins. We’re building the money rails underneath them, so a business in one African country can pay a business in another in their own currencies, seamlessly, without a detour through the dollar. For everyday users, Supercoin will be an everyday money app on the same rails.
Dollar stablecoins went first. Local stablecoins are next, and they’re only just being born.
The rules matter. The draft Crypto Asset Manual for Cross-Border Activities, published by National Treasury and the Reserve Bank on 3 August 2026, is a welcome step. But as drafted, it treats every crypto asset alike, so a rand-backed stablecoin with its reserve at Absa sits in the same bucket as an offshore dollar token.
The Treasury and the Reserve Bank have listened. In last week’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, the Finance Minister said that after thousands of comments they’ll publish a revised second draft, judging transactions on legitimacy and tax compliance rather than pre-approvals. That’s the right direction.
What we want is proportionate rules that recognise a rand-backed stablecoin with an onshore reserve for what it is. Our submission asked, among other things, for a defined category for rand stablecoins with objective criteria, and reporting built on the data the rail already produces. Get the distinction wrong and the tightest controls land on the one instrument built to keep South African money in rands.
So, back to that coffee in Nairobi. Here’s my answer, in one line: we shouldn’t have to abandon our own currencies to take part in the future of money.
