A Rand-backed stablecoin moving between South Africans never leaves the country. The rules should say so.
Reserve Bank deputy governor FundiTshazibana confirmed this month what everyone in this industry has been waitingto hear: new regulatory frameworks for crypto assets are coming. Her reasoningwas blunt. Around eight million crypto trading accounts are now registered inSouth Africa, roughly double the number from early 2022. And since 2019, closeto R63 billion has moved offshore through just the ten largest locally hostedBitcoin wallets, outside the reporting perimeter the SARB relies on to track moneymoving across our borders. The Bank notes the true figure is higher once otherwallets and other assets are counted.
That is not a crypto problem. Itis a visibility problem. And Supercoin's entire business model is built onsolving it.
Regulation is not our obstacle. It is our product.
Supercoin issues ZARsc, aRand-backed stablecoin. Every unit is backed one for one by Rand held at aSouth African bank and can be converted back into Rand on licensed SouthAfrican exchanges, with monthly independent attestations of our reservespublished on our website. We are an FSCA-licensed crypto asset service provider(FSP 53458), registered with the Financial Intelligence Centre, and backed bySuper Group, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company.
So when National Treasurypublished its draft Capital Flow Management Regulations in April, we engaged ontwo fronts. We put our name to the industry's joint submission on making theframework workable, and we filed our own detailed comment. Because the scepticsmiss something basic: a blockchain does not hide transactions. It records everyone, permanently. The R63 billion moved outside the reporting perimeter,through channels built before the rules existed. A regulated, onshorestablecoin is the opposite of that problem. It is the version of thistechnology a central bank can actually watch. Our entire model depends on theregulated route winning. When the SARB says it wants to see what is happeningin the ecosystem, our answer is simple: so do we. That is why we built on railsa regulator can watch.
One asset, one ask
Our own submission asks Treasuryfor one thing above all. The draft currently treats every crypto assetidentically, from Bitcoin to a fully backed digital Rand. But when one SouthAfrican sends a Rand-backed stablecoin to another South African, nothing hasleft the country. The Rand backing it never moves from a South African bankaccount. It is a local Rand payment that settles in seconds, at any hour, withno clearing cut-offs. The draft treats that transfer with the same suspicion assending Bitcoin to an offshore wallet, and that is the one thing we have askedTreasury to change: recognise a domestic, Rand-backed, Rand-redeemablestablecoin as its own category, and treat a transfer of it between tworesidents as what it is, a local payment rather than a cross-border capitalmovement.
The industry's joint submissionmakes the same point from the other direction: treating Rand-backed stablecoinsas foreign currency by default would foreclose the very payment innovations theSARB itself has identified as central to South Africa's payments future.
Encouragingly, the deputy governorherself drew exactly this line, pointing out that a Rand-denominated stablecoinand a foreign-backed one have very different implications. That is thedistinction we want written into the final rules.
What is actually at stake: the cost of moving money
This debate can sound abstract, solet me make it concrete. Sending $200 into Sub-Saharan Africa costs 8.78% onaverage, making it the most expensive region in the world to send money to, onthe World Bank's most recent published figures. Chainalysis data shows theregion received $205 billion in on-chain value in the year to June 2025, up52%, with stablecoins making up 43% of all crypto volume here. People are notusing these tools to speculate. They are using them to pay, save and trade,because the existing rails are slow and expensive.
Get the rules right and SouthAfrica becomes the reference point for how an emerging market brings thisinside the regulatory perimeter: instant settlement for businesses, paymentsthat clear at 2am on a Sunday, and a dramatically cheaper way to reach peoplethe traditional system has struggled to serve. A fully backed digital Rand,held in a KYC-verified wallet on a phone, is one of the most practicalfinancial inclusion tools this country has seen. Get the rules wrong, and theactivity does not stop. It simply moves to channels nobody supervises, which isprecisely how R63 billion moved beyond the reporting net in the first place.
Where we are going: a stablecoin for every major African currency
The Rand is where we start, notwhere we stop. Much of the value Africa moves across its own borders is stillrouted through the US dollar, on flows that never needed to leave thecontinent. Our long-term ambition is a family of regulated, local-currencystablecoins for Africa's major markets, each licensed locally and backedlocally, so that African value can settle on African terms. South Africa, withthe continent's most developed regulatory framework for crypto assets, is thenatural place to prove the model. Regulators' own stocktake has identifiedseveral Rand-backed stablecoins already in issue here. Whoever gets theframework right first sets the template for the continent.
The SARB says a lot of work willbe done in the coming months to build these frameworks. We have offered to bepart of that work, and our full submission to Treasury sets out practicalfixes: a workable transition for already-licensed providers, thresholdspublished for comment, and reporting obligations matched to actual risk. Noneof it asks for a free pass. All of it asks for rules that make the supervisedroute the obvious one.
Money should move at the speed oflife. On the evidence of the past week, the regulator is asking the rightquestions. Now the rules need to catch up with both of us.
Gideon Greaves is Managing Director of Supercoin (Super Money SA(Pty) Ltd), an FSCA-licensed crypto asset service provider and part ofNYSE-listed Super Group. Monthly independent attestations of ZARsc reserves arepublished at supercoin.co.za. A high-resolution headshot is available onrequest.
