The most expensive money on earth
Sending money home to Africa costs more than sending it anywhere else — fees charged by middlemen who stopped carrying the risk years ago.
The internet made information programmable.Blockchains made value programmable.Intelligence makes decisions programmable.
We build the layer where all three meet.
What we believe
Shiga is sophisticated on-chain infrastructure, built locally for the Gulf–Africa corridor. We believe Bitcoin is the hardest money the world has ever produced, stablecoins are the most honest dollars most people will ever hold, and the next decade of finance will be written on-chain or not at all.
Our work is to make these instruments usable in the real economy — to save, to settle, to send — and to apply intelligence where it removes friction without removing the user's authority over their own money.
Why we build
Days, for what takes seconds
A Dubai-to-Lagos payment still waits on banks that close at five and sleep on weekends. Rails that settle in seconds already exist.
Savings that melt
Naira held since 2021 lost roughly two-thirds of its dollar value. An ordinary saver has no honest store of value within reach.
Nobody’s coming
The incumbents earn from the friction, so they won’t remove it. We’re from this corridor — we’re building the rails it should have had.
The money already moves. The market never got built.
Liquidity from the shadows
The corridor’s flows run through informal brokers and unregulated desks. No screening, no recourse, no records — and the risk sits with whoever can least afford it.
No best execution, no post-trade
Fragmented liquidity means nobody sees the real price. And after the trade: no settlement finality, no reconciliation, no audit trail. It works — until the day it doesn’t.
So we built the market structure
Pulse formalises that liquidity: screened counterparties, one pool, best execution across it, quotes that settle as shown, and a permanent record after every trade — on wallets only the users control.
And it compounds: every flow teaches the routing, every provider deepens the pool, every participant makes the corridor safer and cheaper for the next one. That is why we build.
What we build
The account
A digital asset bank account for people and businesses. Dollars, Bitcoin, and gold under your control alone — secured by your device passkey, untouchable even by us — and usable in the real economy: to save, to send, to spend.
Ownership of money, made usable.
The engine
The engine underneath — moving money in any direction, digital or local, at the best price the market can give. Custody sealed in hardware no one can reach. Intelligence that sharpens with every flow it settles. It already runs every Enta transaction; now platforms build on it too.
Access to money, made programmable.
Built between Nigeria and the ADGM — for the corridor the incumbents have left behind.
2016
Facilitate FX founded
The work began with a simple problem: helping people and businesses move between USD and NGN with clearer pricing and more reliable settlement.
2019
Stablecoin liquidity in Nigeria
The team provided USD liquidity for early stablecoin products in Nigeria, learning where digital dollars could solve real cross-border friction.
2021
Shiga launched
Shiga started as an OTC desk built for businesses that needed dependable access to digital assets, liquidity, and fast settlement.
2023
From desk to infrastructure
After the MiniPay accelerator, the focus shifted from a phone-based product toward the deeper infrastructure needed to support wallets, payments, and partners.
2024
Regulated rails at scale
Selected for the Stellar accelerator and backed by the Africa Growth Fund, Shiga launched V1 and crossed $100M in processed volume.
2025
Global partners joined
Tether invested and partnered with the company, while Visa accelerator programs helped sharpen the payments and treasury infrastructure.
2026
Enta + Pulse
Enta and Pulse open the next chapter: one account for USDT, Bitcoin, gold, and cross-border payments, built on the rails Shiga has been proving since 2016.