David Nandwa

David Nandwa is the founder of HoneyCoin, a Nairobi-based payments company that helps businesses collect, convert and settle money across borders using a blend of traditional currency and stablecoin rails. He taught himself to code at nine, built apps as a teenager, and is reported to have founded and sold a company before starting HoneyCoin in 2020, at 19. The idea was personal: while working remotely from Kenya for a US company, he had his earnings frozen by a foreign payment platform, a sharp lesson in how poorly global finance serves Africans.

HoneyCoin started as a consumer product, now called Peer, before launching its business offering in 2023. It also supplies white-label tools such as multi-currency wallets and treasury services. Investor Flourish Ventures reports that quarterly payment volume grew from about USD 45 million in late 2023 to roughly USD 500 million by the end of 2024, with around 350 enterprise customers including Jiji and MoneyGram. In August 2025 the company closed a USD 4.9 million seed round co-led by Flourish, with backers such as Visa Ventures, TLcom Capital, the Stellar Development Foundation, Lava and Antler.

Nandwa is often described as one of Africa's youngest fintech chief executives and is regarded as a leading blockchain engineer. He has advised Kenya's Parliament on crypto policy, spoken at Paris Blockchain Week in 2024 and appeared on the Devcon speaker list, and was profiled in Business Daily's Top 40 Under 40. His stated goal is simple: financial infrastructure that genuinely works for Africans.