Five years ago, a 19-year-old software engineer in Nairobi learned a harsh truth about global finance. After completing a freelance project for an overseas client, Nandwa received a $5,000 payment, only for PayPal to freeze his funds, citing his country as a “high-risk jurisdiction.”

“I was building global systems, but I couldn’t access my own money,” Nandwa recalls. “That’s when it hit me — Africans weren’t just excluded from opportunities, we were excluded from access itself.”

That frustration didn’t fade. It evolved into Honeycoin, a fintech platform designed to fix the broken bridge between Africa’s traditional finance and the blockchain-powered global economy.

Building Honeycoin from the Ground Up

In 2020, amid the stillness of pandemic lockdowns, Nandwa began building Honeycoin from his apartment. What started as a bold idea has since grown into a company that now processes over $150 million in monthly transactions across 40 global markets.

At its core, Honeycoin aims to democratise financial access. The platform enables businesses to issue stablecoin wallets, create virtual cards, connect to banking APIs, and plug directly into global blockchain payment rails.

“Honeycoin is more than just another fintech app,” Nandwa explains. “It’s an operating system for money, a way for people and businesses in emerging markets to finally control their own financial destinies.”

By offering seamless access to digital assets and financial tools, Honeycoin empowers developers, traders, and companies across Africa to send, receive, and manage funds effortlessly.

From Gaming Dreams to Global Impact

Long before founding Honeycoin, Nandwa was simply a kid fascinated by computers. His father, an engineer, nurtured that curiosity. “I loved video games,” Nandwa says, “and my dad told me, if you learn how to code, you can build your own games.”

That single conversation sparked a lifelong passion. By age nine, he was teaching himself to code. By 12, he was sharing knowledge on online forums. In his teens, he was fluent in Ruby, C, Python, and JavaScript, languages that became the building blocks of his career.

But in the early 2010s, the African developer community was small and scattered. “Software engineering wasn’t cool back then,” he laughs. “There were no tech meetups, no communities, just online learning and late nights.”

Learning from Flutterwave and Building Better

Before Honeycoin, Nandwa built and exited two startups, including an e-commerce venture in Dar es Salaam that reached nearly $1 million in annual revenue before being acquired by Zapata.

His turning point, however, came during his time at Flutterwave, Africa’s fintech unicorn. There, he worked as a software engineer, helping integrate and expand payment systems across multiple African countries.

“Flutterwave was my classroom,” he reflects. “That’s where I saw the complexity of scaling payments in Africa, and how fragile third-party infrastructure can be.”

That realisation shaped Honeycoin’s vision. Instead of depending on unreliable financial rails, Nandwa built a blockchain-based infrastructure designed for speed, reliability, and global interoperability.