In 2025, stablecoins have quietly moved from crypto circles to the centre of global finance. According to recent reports, over 90% of banks and fintechs are now integrating stablecoin infrastructure into their operations. What started as an experiment in faster, cheaper transactions is fast becoming the backbone of how businesses move money, especially across borders.
For agencies, freelancers, and micro-teams working internationally, this shift couldn’t have come at a better time. Payments have always been the hardest part of global collaboration: slow, expensive, and frustratingly complex. But with stablecoins and wallet-based payment systems, a new kind of infrastructure is taking shape — one that makes paying flexible teams as simple as sending a message.
Having recently been featured in Disrupt Africa as a leading stablecoin platform for agencies, startups, and flexible teams, Rafiki has deep domain expertise into this booming ecosystem.
With Rafiki Works, we’re seeing this first-hand. Rafiki provide stablecoin wallets for both individuals and businesses, designed to make cross-border subcontracting and multi-party payments instant, compliant, and cost-effective. For African and South African agencies working with clients in the US or Europe, this provides economic empowerment and unlocks earnings potential through fast and affordable payments.
The broken reality of cross-border payments and why stablecoins win
Freelancing and fractional work are not fringe trends but rather systemic shifts happening in the workplace. In South Africa alone, an estimated 34% of the working population already freelances, and the local freelance platforms market exceeded US$95 million in revenue in 2023. In that context, one of the most persistent barriers holds back growth: getting paid fast and affordably from clients and agencies abroad.
Traditional cross-border payments are slow, expensive, and rigid. Imagine a South African agency doing work for a US or EU client: first converting USD to ZAR, paying multiple subcontractors, chasing receipts, dealing with compliance checks, waiting days for funds to land. That’s not just friction, it’s a leakage of value. And when you multiply that across teams, projects, and revisions, you lose margins, trust, and momentum.
This is where Rafiki Works’ stablecoin wallet infrastructure flips the script. Whether working with subcontractors in Latin America, the US, Europe, or across African borders, agencies and freelancers can send funds in stablecoin, instantly, with negligible cost. Multi-party invoices break down one client payment into fair shares for every contributor. The infrastructure supports US to LatAm, US to EU, and even ZAR corridors, so nothing is locked in. Transfers that used to take days (and cost a premium) now settle in seconds.
Why fractional teams win with better payments on Rafiki Works
For many freelancers and micro-agencies, the real bottleneck isn’t necessarily getting the work, it’s getting paid fairly and on time. Fractional teams, made up of independent specialists in design, marketing, or software, thrive on agility. When money moves slowly, collaboration slows with it.
Stablecoins and wallet-based payment systems change that dynamic entirely. They allow businesses to pay multiple contributors in one go, instantly and transparently. With Rafiki’s multi-party invoicing logic, what used to be a tangle of individual transfers becomes one simple workflow: the client pays once, and every contributor, whether in Johannesburg, Lisbon, or Mexico City, receives their share immediately.
For fractional and subcontracting teams, it means no more juggling currencies, no more waiting for wire transfers, and no more 7% fees on every payment. It gives business and talent the predictability they need to plan, budget, collaborate and grow.
With fractional talent in countries like South Africa booming, and international agencies and startups leveraging Rafiki Works to onboard, verify, stay compliant, and pay freelance and micro-agency talent in South Africa, it's clear to see the shift towards fractional workforces in happening quickly.
The bigger picture: collaboration, compliance, and confidence
For global agencies and startups leveraging Rafiki, talent, compliance, invoicing and payments are no longer a fragmented problem, but rather a one-stop, highly efficient solution.
Rafiki embeds compliance and verification directly into every wallet and workflow. Every freelancer, business, or micro-agency on the platform is KYC’d or KYB’d, ensuring that every transaction is traceable and safe without adding friction. The result is a payments layer that supports collaboration, not complexity.
Take a simple example: a creative agency in New York partners with a white-label design team in Cape Town and a fractional growth strategist in Amsterdam. The client pays once in USDC, and Rafiki instantly routes those funds to verified wallets and provides off-ramping solutions, so the strategist gets their share in EUR, the design team in ZAR, and the agency keeps its margin. Everyone sees the same invoice trail, the same data and the same trust while all getting paid at the same time.
With Rafiki’s Talent Services, embedded into the software, agencies and startups can tap into senior freelance and micro-agency talent at the point of need, add them to a new or ongoing project, and start making payments immediately.
What does the future of work look like?
Getting money across borders quickly and affordably is the foundation, but the real opportunity lies in helping independents and agencies build sustainable, long-term businesses. That means giving them access to benefits, insurance, savings tools, and financial products designed for flexible work. This is the ecosystem Rafiki Works is building.
We’re starting with the infrastructure that underpins everything else: stablecoin wallets, multi-party invoicing, and instant cross-border payments. These tools already make it possible for agencies and freelancers to work together across continents without the usual cost or delay. But over time, they’ll do more than just move money.
Africa’s talent network, from senior freelancers to small, specialist agencies, is one of the most creative and entrepreneurial in the world. The more we connect it to the rest of the global economy through technology that removes friction and builds trust, the stronger it becomes.
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If you're an agency, startup, or small businesses operating between the US, LatAm, Europe, or South Africa, Rafiki Works can help you pay and receive payments quickly and affordably by verifying independents and other businesses through KYC and KYB, access to stablecoin wallets, and a multi-party invoicing solution to manage flexible teams and payments across borders with ease.
