Yellow Card exits crypto exchange, expands global stablecoi...

Yellow Card, the Africa-focused digital asset company, is shifting from cryptocurrency trading to stablecoin infrastructure as it targets global expansion following a fresh $40 million equity funding round.

The company, which has raised about $145 million in equity since inception, said it would use the new capital to scale its Global USD Accounts product, strengthen stablecoin payment infrastructure and expand into Latin America, Asia-Pacific and the United Arab Emirates.

The strategic shift marks a significant change in Yellow Card’s business model as it moves away from retail cryptocurrency trading towards providing payment infrastructure that enables banks, fintechs and businesses to move money across borders using stablecoins.

Group Vice President of Operations and Managing Director of Yellow Card Nigeria, Lasbery Oludimu, disclosed this at a media briefing in Lagos, saying the company now sees greater commercial value in providing the infrastructure behind digital payments than in selling cryptocurrencies to individual users.

“We are no longer a crypto company. Yellow Card is now a stablecoin infrastructure provider. We are no longer into buying and selling Bitcoin or offering investment products,” Oludimu said.

He said the company had built infrastructure that financial institutions and businesses could integrate into their operations to facilitate international payments, issue stablecoin wallets and develop digital financial products on a compliant platform.

The latest funding round, led by SC Ventures by Standard Chartered, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital alongside other strategic investors, brings Yellow Card’s total equity funding to about $145 million, underscoring the growing institutional interest in stablecoin-based financial infrastructure.

Oludimu said the fresh capital would support the company’s transition from an Africa-focused cryptocurrency exchange into a global financial infrastructure provider, with expansion plans targeting emerging markets outside the continent.

Yellow Card currently operates in more than 50 markets globally, including more than 20 African countries, but the company said Africa would remain central to its expansion strategy.

“We are not done in Africa. Africa remains our foundation and we will continue investing heavily across the continent, particularly in licensing and regulatory compliance, while expanding globally,” he said.

The company’s strategic repositioning follows its decision to shut down its cryptocurrency exchange business across Africa in December 2025.

Oludimu said the decision was not driven by conditions in Nigeria but was part of a broader commercial assessment that showed the company’s technology could generate greater value by serving businesses and financial institutions.

“We realised the infrastructure we had built was better utilised by businesses than individual users,” he said.

The move places regulation at the centre of Yellow Card’s international growth strategy, with Oludimu identifying licensing across multiple jurisdictions as the company’s biggest expansion challenge.

“Regulation is our biggest barrier. For us to scale sustainably, licensing is critical. We have built our business around compliance because global institutional investors expect nothing less,” he said.

He disclosed that Yellow Card had secured regulatory approvals in Switzerland, South Africa and Botswana, while pursuing additional licences in Nigeria, Kenya, Namibia, Mozambique and other markets.

The company has also established a dedicated regulatory engagement team to work with governments and financial regulators across Africa as digital asset rules evolve.

Oludimu welcomed the Central Bank of Nigeria’s second Regulatory Sandbox programme, particularly its dedicated Virtual Asset Service Provider track, saying the initiative could create a more structured environment for responsible innovation in digital financial services.

He said Yellow Card’s approach was to work proactively with regulators rather than wait for regulatory requirements to emerge.

“We don’t wait for regulators to come to us. We approach them because we want to be regulated. Regulation builds confidence, protects consumers and enables the industry to grow responsibly,” he said.

The expansion could also have implications for employment in Nigeria, which remains Yellow Card’s largest global talent hub.

Oludimu said Nigeria has the company’s largest concentration of employees, while Africans account for between 85 and 90 per cent of its workforce.

He said the company’s international expansion would require additional talent rather than trigger job cuts.

“We will definitely be bringing in more people because expansion requires more hands. This growth is about creating opportunities, not reducing them,” he said.

Yellow Card’s pivot comes as stablecoins increasingly move beyond their traditional association with cryptocurrency trading into payments, cross-border settlements, treasury management and other financial services.

For Nigeria and other African economies, the emergence of stablecoin infrastructure could provide an alternative channel for international payments, particularly for businesses facing costly and inefficient cross-border settlement processes.

The company’s challenge, however, will be to convert its substantial funding and African market base into a scalable global infrastructure business while navigating increasingly complex licensing, compliance and consumer-protection requirements across jurisdictions.

With $40 million in fresh capital and about $145 million raised in total equity funding, Yellow Card is betting that the next phase of digital finance will be less about trading cryptocurrencies and more about building the infrastructure that allows money to move across borders faster, more efficiently and under regulated conditions.