Luno has acquired GTXN, a Kenyan cross-border payments provider and licensed fund manager led by serial entrepreneur Dan Kleinbaum, for an undisclosed sum, the company confirmed. Marking Kleinbaum’s second fintech buyout following the sale of Beyonic in 2020, the deal folds GTXN’s licensed collection and payout infrastructure into Luno’s existing operations. The integration gives business clients a single regulated route to move money between developed and emerging markets — over rails Luno owns, settled against Luno’s own liquidity — with GTXN now operating as the group’s cross-border payments arm.
The problem: correspondent banking’s long chain
Most cross-border payments still run on the correspondent banking network, where money does not travel directly from sender to receiver but hops through a chain of intermediary banks that each hold accounts for one another. In developing markets, that chain is longer — often two or three intermediaries deep — because local banks lack direct relationships with banks in destination countries. Each hop adds a settlement delay, a currency conversion and a fee, while every intermediary runs its own compliance and sanctions screening. Many developing-market banks also quote exchange rates with markups that are not disclosed as a separate charge, so the true cost of a transfer exceeds the headline rate.
The numbers bear this out. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s most expensive remittance region, with the average cost of sending $200 sitting at 7.9% — more than double the UN Sustainable Development Goal target of 3% by 2030. Africa’s cross-border payments market was valued at $329 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2035, but the infrastructure to serve it efficiently has lagged.
“Moving money between developed and emerging markets is still too slow and too expensive, and our clients feel it every day,” Luno chief executive James Lanigan said. “GTXN gives us the payment rails to match.”
What GTXN actually changes
GTXN was founded in Nairobi in 2022 and licensed by Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority as a fund manager in May 2024. Its business spans foreign exchange and treasury advisory, digital treasury operations, and securitisation services for corporates and institutions in East Africa.
For a business client, the flow becomes simpler: money moves in and out through one provider, over Luno-owned rails, and settles against Luno’s liquidity. Instead of stitching together a chain of banks and intermediaries, a client collects and pays out through one licensed entity.
The deal is the latest in a series of moves by Luno to build out B2B and institutional services. In September 2026 — the same month as the acquisition — Luno launched instant stablecoin minting for corporate clients in partnership with Meridian, a US-regulated clearinghouse. Dollars arriving over ACH, FedWire or SWIFT are cleared and minted into stablecoins including USDC and USDT, settling directly into the client’s Luno wallet. The service launched first in South Africa, with plans to extend across Southeast Asia.
Luno also secured a Class F Digital Asset Business licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority in August 2026, giving it a regulated base outside its core African and Asia-Pacific markets. The licence covers OTC trading, global spot markets and wallet infrastructure. The Bermuda licence “will help power” the instant minting offering, according to the company.
GTXN is led by chief executive Kleinbaum, who has spent more than a decade building payments infrastructure in emerging markets. He co-founded Beyonic, a mobile-money platform spanning seven African markets that was acquired by Onafriq in 2020, and subsequently built a foreign exchange and cross-border treasury business serving corporates and institutions in East Africa.
A crowded field
Luno is not alone in targeting Africa’s cross-border payments gap. Yellow Card, a pan-African stablecoin infrastructure provider, raised $40 million in August 2026 from investors including Standard Chartered and Sony’s innovation fund, and supports more than 50 currencies across over 50 countries. It counts Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Coinbase among customers. Onafriq, which acquired Kleinbaum’s previous venture Beyonic, has scaled USDC stablecoin settlement across more than 40 African markets in partnership with Circle, aiming to cut $5 billion in annual cross-border fees.
Traditional banks are also moving. Absa announced a partnership with cross-border payments provider Thunes in March 2026, targeting lower fees and quicker settlement across 18 countries, while rivals including FNB and Capitec have entered similar partnerships or built competing products.
What distinguishes Luno’s approach is the combination of owned rails, crypto-native settlement and regulatory standing across multiple African markets. The company serves more than 15 million customers across Africa and Southeast Asia, operates across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia and the Philippines, and reported approximately $80.6 million in revenue for 2025. In July 2026, Luno cut roughly 20% of its global workforce as part of a restructuring aimed at shifting resources toward B2B and institutional business lines — a move Lanigan described as making the company “leaner and adapted” for current market conditions.
The regulatory question mark
The acquisition lands while South Africa’s regulatory framework for cross-border crypto activity is still being shaped. National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank published a draft Crypto Asset Manual for Cross-Border Activities and an accompanying draft Capital Flow Management Regulations framework in August 2026, both open for public comment until 30 September 2026.
As currently drafted, the rules would effectively prohibit South African businesses from using crypto assets or stablecoins for cross-border payments, even where the same transaction would be permitted through a bank or authorised foreign exchange dealer. The draft Manual also proposes what critics describe as a “one-way door”: individuals would be permitted to withdraw crypto assets from regulated service providers into personal wallets but would not be allowed to return those assets to the regulated financial system.
VALR co-founder and CEO Farzam Ehsani has said at least R2.2 billion in potential foreign investment in South African crypto businesses has been placed on hold because of uncertainty over the proposed rules, including a proposed R1.6 billion investment by an international private equity firm. Luno has joined VALR, AltCoinTrader and EasyEquities in a coalition called Catastrophe, which has secured backing from 193 organisations and more than 5,300 individuals.
Luno’s stated position, shared with other regulated crypto asset service providers, is that the final rules should preserve access to licensed, regulated innovation so that South African businesses can use the same cross-border tools being adopted elsewhere in the world. GTXN sits inside that same conversation — it is a licensed, auditable route for the kind of activity the draft rules are considering, built and brought to market while the consultation is still open. Whether the final rules permit that route to operate is a question the consultation period will answer by the end of September.
For enterprises that move money between developed and emerging markets, the practical change is threefold: fewer intermediaries in the payment chain, clearer pricing with fewer hidden markups, and quicker settlement through one regulated provider. But the regulatory context in South Africa — Luno’s largest market — introduces a material uncertainty. A licensed route exists; whether it remains a permitted one is not yet settled.