Proof of Progress: Mansa, the Tether-Backed Layer Moving $540M

Money still moves slower than an email, and this was the exact problem that Mansa founder saw and wanted to fix. Mouloukou Sanoh, co-founder and CEO of Mansa sat down with BlockInsider recently to speak about a journey that feels almost like an entrepreneur’s dream come true, only his dream is to truly change how money moves.

Mansa, the Tether-backed settlement layer, is aiming for $2 billion in stablecoin volume by December. How this is going to materialize is the crux of the one-hour conversation with Mouloukou.

When I sat with Sanoh to interview him for Proof of Progress, Block Insider's franchise that tracks builders who ship measurable outcomes in the web3 space, one thing was clear - Mouloukou and Mansa aren’t just about empty promises. Sanoh’s story and Mansa’s existence are much deeper rooted in issues that Mouloukou faced as a student, when his parents sent him money overseas and ended up paying too much in Forex fees.

In 2026, as Mansa completes 2 years in the market, Sanoh's pitch is simple: kill prefunding, and stablecoin cross-border payments stop taxing growth.

So how does a company born out of one painful remittance fee end up eyeing to replace Swift? Here is the full picture.

Proof of Progress: Mansa by the Numbers

From a Painful Fee to $540M in Stablecoin Cross-Border Payments

The origin story is personal, like an origin story should be. As a student, Sanoh watched his parents pay heavy fees just to send him money in Hong Kong, and that friction became the reason behind a successful company.

Mansa launched in August 2024, co-founded by Sanoh and Nkiru Uwaje, as a stablecoin-powered settlement layer for payment companies across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In February 2025, the firm announced a $10 million raise: a $3 million pre-seed led by Tether, plus $7 million in liquidity funding.

Twenty-two months in, Sanoh put settled volume at $540 million, "roughly $550 million," across 40 currency corridors. The firm also just closed a $100 million credit line to expand its balance sheet, he said. Client fintechs, in his telling, grew revenue by an average of 30% and transaction volume by around 40%.

"A Tax on Growth": Why Mansa Killed Prefunding

The problem Mansa attacks sits under nearly every international transfer. "Swift is not a value transfer system," Sanoh said: it is a messaging layer where correspondent banks talk to each other, while the money itself waits.

Payment firms work around this by parking capital in every corridor they serve. Balance sheet size then decides how many transactions a fintech can run and which markets it can enter. "It's essentially a tax on growth," Sanoh said.

Mansa flips the model. It funds each client transaction from its own balance sheet at the moment of settlement, releasing Tether (USDT) so treasuries can move into pesos, naira, rupees, or whichever local currency the payout needs. No idle capital, no corridor-by-corridor float.

The clients seem to agree. WeWire, which Sanoh called the biggest payment company in Ghana and one of Mansa's earliest believers, now runs 30% of its volume through the platform.

Why China Was the Corridor Worth Cracking

When Mansa mapped its highest-friction corridors, three stood out: China, Colombia, and India.

China shipped first. Payout rails into the mainland went live in July 2026 and crossed $10 million in volume within a month, settling same day, according to Sanoh. His conviction here is biographical: he grew up partly in China and later Hong Kong, and watched the country become the world's largest trade corridor. Notably, its biggest trading partners sit in emerging markets, exactly where stablecoin adoption runs highest.

Colombia comes next, with local peso payouts and FX conversion. Then India, where Sanoh wants compliant Indian rupee rails for the world's largest remittance market.

Why Mansa Bets Everything on USDT

Tether is not just Mansa's lead investor; Sanoh calls it the firm's biggest partner and mentor. The loyalty is also commercial. A stablecoin, he argued, is "only as good as its ability to move in and out of local currency," and USDT has the deepest liquidity in emerging markets.

"In the markets that matter, people only ask for one thing. They ask for USDT," he said. The market agrees on scale: USDT held a market cap of about $183.35 billion as of 7 August, the largest of any stablecoin, according to data from CoinGecko.

On local stablecoins, Sanoh is constructive but conditional. They only work, he said, with bank interoperability and one-to-one fiat convertibility. Until then, USDT stays the bridge currency.

The Road to $2 Billion

The targets are aggressive, and Sanoh admits it. He wants $2 billion in stablecoin settled by the end of 2026 and $4 billion next year, with payout rails handling $50 million to $100 million monthly within 12 months.

Two products carry the plan. Virtual international bank account numbers (IBANs), starting with Colombian pesos, let Mansa collect and pay out locally, compressing cross-border settlement "in minutes." And AI is already in the stack: credit analysis runs through an in-house AI credit agent, with liquidity and treasury agents in development.

The Bottom Line

The founder behind the numbers got rejected by more than 100 investors before Tether said yes. "I pinched myself," Sanoh said of the moment. The product took two years and multiple pivots, which shaped his one rule for builders:

"You must be delusional enough to believe that you can solve this particular problem."

The proof, as always in this franchise, sits in the next set of numbers. Mansa has five months to close the gap between $540 million and $2 billion, a near four-times jump.

If the China rail holds its pace and Colombia and India ship on schedule, the target looks ambitious but achievable. If not, $2 billion simply becomes next year's milestone. Sanoh has agreed to come back on the show and be measured against it, and that is exactly the point of Proof of Progress.