02. July 2026 — Cedar Money ("Cedar"), a regulated cross-border payments and FX infrastructure provider specialising in emerging markets, and Noah, the API-first stablecoin payments platform, today announced a strategic infrastructure partnership designed to unlock compliant, scalable cross-border payment flows between Africa and global markets.
The partnership addresses one of the most persistent friction points in global B2B trade: the difficulty of underwriting and onboarding African merchants onto Western compliance standards. Under the agreement, Cedar serves as the regulated onboarding and compliance layer, conducting KYC, AML, sanctions screening, and PEP checks under its financial institution licence. By providing a trusted framework for merchant onboarding and risk management, Cedar enables businesses to connect to global payment networks efficiently and compliantly.
Noah provides the stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure, including named virtual EUR and USD accounts and programmable payout capabilities across multiple currencies. Together, Cedar and Noah deliver an integrated solution that combines regulated access, modern payment rails, and global settlement capabilities, helping businesses move funds across borders faster, more transparently, and with lower operational friction.
Solving the Africa Underwriting Problem at Scale
Emerging economy importers and exporters represent a significant and underserved segment of global trade. Businesses in these markets face systemic barriers: traditional financial institutions find it difficult to underwrite African entities to Western compliance standards, while African merchants need virtual accounts so their trading counterparts can identify and reconcile incoming funds. Cedar and Noah solve both problems simultaneously.
Cedar brings deep expertise in making African businesses legible to global financial infrastructure — a capability built over years of serving importers and exporters across the continent. This expertise is reinforced by a strong compliance and regulatory foundation, including registration with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), registration with Canada's Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC), and registration under the Bank of Canada’s Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA). Together, these frameworks enable Cedar to meet the compliance, transparency, and risk management standards expected by global financial institutions. Noah brings the scalable, compliant, stablecoin-powered rails to settle those payments into Europe, the US, Asia, and beyond.
"Africa represents a significant opportunity for global trade finance, but access has always been gated by compliance complexity. Cedar exists to remove that gate. Our partnership with Noah means African businesses can now settle invoices with their global counterparts using best-in-class infrastructure — and the compliance layer travels with them." - Benjy Feinberg, CEO, Cedar Money
"Working with Cedar has given us a genuinely differentiated path into African markets. Their compliance depth is exceptional — it's the kind of infrastructure that changes what's possible for Western payment platforms looking to access African business flows responsibly. We're building something meaningful together." - Shah Ramezani, CEO and Founder, Noah
Looking Ahead
Together, Cedar and Noah are building a compliant, scalable bridge between African businesses and the global economy — pairing deep emerging-market compliance expertise with stablecoin-native payment infrastructure. With testing complete and live transactions underway, both companies see this partnership as the foundation for broadening access to global payment rails for underserved markets in the months and years ahead.