Taran’s selection came from a competitive pool of applicants and followed a structured evaluation process by the Base ecosystem.
African fintech startup Taran App has received a grant from Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer-2 network, marking a major milestone in its mission to simplify how Africans move money across borders and into global digital assets.
For Taran App, the grant is more than funding – it is validation.
“This grant from Base is a strong validation of our mission to build practical, compliant crypto infrastructure for real-world payments in Africa.
By leveraging the Base network, we are accelerating low-cost, scalable rails that connect stablecoins to everyday financial use cases and strengthen Africa’s role in the global digital economy.”
Pointing to years of deep technical work and market-specific design focused on how Africans actually move money – particularly across fragmented mobile money systems and into stablecoins, Eric Michubu, Co-founder & COO, Taran App, said:
“This milestone represents a strong validation of both the problem we set out to solve and the approach we have taken.”
Across Africa, mobile money remains the backbone of everyday payments. But moving value between different mobile money networks – or from mobile money into global crypto rails like stablecoins – is still slow, expensive, and operationally complex.
Taran App was built to address that gap.
The platform enables non-custodial swaps between African mobile money ecosystems and stablecoins, allowing users to retain control of their funds while accessing faster, more transparent settlement. By removing unnecessary intermediaries, Taran App aims to reduce friction while maintaining reliability and trust – two requirements often missing in cross-border payment solutions.
The team says designing this system was anything but simple:
“Building a non-custodial swap model that removes unnecessary intermediaries while remaining transparent and reliable was technically demanding, but essential to building trust,” Eric noted.
Taran’s selection came from a competitive pool of applicants and followed a structured evaluation process by the Base ecosystem. According to the team, the assessment focused on:
Taran App stood out by tackling a challenge that sits at the intersection of African financial infrastructure and global crypto rails – enabling easier movement between mobile money and stablecoins while prioritising security, user control and system integrity.
“There are SMEs that use M-PESA to receive payment but they cannot really use M-PESA to pay their suppliers and have to either bank it or send someone across the borders.
These are the kinds of people we’re helping and by using our platform to settle invoices across the borders, it simplifies the process of having to move or convert the money.
So far we’re catering for Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Somalia market.”
This focus aligns closely with Base’s goal of supporting applications that bring real-world utility to blockchain technology.
From the outset, Taran App says its product philosophy has been guided by three principles:
The app is designed to work seamlessly across devices and user types – from individuals moving personal funds to businesses managing cross-border payments. Behind the scenes, this required deep technical work to ensure reliability without sacrificing usability.
Just as importantly, the non-custodial design ensures users maintain control of their funds, an increasingly important trust factor as crypto adoption grows across Africa.
According to Eric, the company is actively engaging the regulators and looking to get licensed in Kenya, South Africa, and Botswana.
With the Base grant secured, Taran App is looking ahead to its next phase of growth. Key priorities include:
As stablecoins become an increasingly important settlement layer for African fintechs, Taran App is positioning itself as a bridge between familiar mobile money systems and global on-chain liquidity.
