Yellow Card, the Africa-founded stablecoin infrastructure company, has closed a $40m strategic funding round backed by Standard Chartered’s venture arm and Sony’s innovation fund, capital it plans to use to extend its dollar-denominated business accounts well beyond the continent where it built its name.
The raise brings the firm’s total equity financing above $120m and underscores how traditional financial institutions and corporate venture arms are racing to secure exposure to stablecoin-based payment networks. SC Ventures, the innovation unit of Standard Chartered, and Sony Innovation Fund were joined by crypto-native investors Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital, alongside other strategic backers that Yellow Card declined to name.
Chief executive Chris Maurice said the fresh funds would be directed at scaling the company’s “Global USD Accounts” — digital dollar accounts offered to businesses — and at expanding the stablecoin rails that connect those accounts to local payment systems in an increasing number of markets. While the group will continue to deepen its African footprint, which spans more than 20 countries, it plans to build a substantial presence in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.
“Traditional payment companies continue to question not if they need a stablecoin strategy, but how quickly they can deploy one,” Maurice said in a statement, reprising a line he has used previously to describe accelerating corporate demand. “We’re connecting more banks, fintechs and enterprises to stablecoin rails so dollar access isn’t just something a handful of institutions get to offer.”
Founded in Nigeria in 2019 and now headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Yellow Card positions itself as a bridge between the old world of correspondent banking and the newer infrastructure of stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies, predominantly the US dollar. The company says it has processed more than $10bn in cumulative transactions, supports over 50 currencies, and holds licences, authorisations or registrations across 22 jurisdictions in North America, Europe and Africa.
Its platform lets corporate clients hold dollars and stablecoins, swap between them, manage treasury, and collect or disburse local currencies using domestic payment rails, sidestepping the cost and complexity of traditional cross-border transfers. The pitch has resonated with large payments groups: last year Yellow Card announced a partnership with Visa, focused on building stablecoin use cases in Africa and other emerging markets.
Yet the Visa collaboration came at a delicate moment. Just days earlier, Ghana’s central bank had publicly censured Yellow Card, highlighting the persistent tension between fintech innovators and financial regulators across Africa. In a June 10, 2025 circular, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) warned the public against “unlicensed digital platforms” and specifically named YellowPay — the stablecoin-based payments service promoted by Yellow Card — as operating outside the country’s regulatory perimeter.
Yellow Card responded forcefully. Craig Stoehr, the company’s general counsel, said the firm had provided the Bank of Ghana with the relevant facts well before the notice was issued, describing the central bank’s decision to proceed regardless as “most unfortunate.”
The dispute underscored the fine line between financial innovation and regulatory compliance that continues to shape Africa’s fintech sector. Such tensions are likely to persist as countries with some of the world’s highest rates of cryptocurrency adoption — including Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia — tighten oversight of digital assets.
Yellow Card, however, has consistently positioned itself as an advocate for regulatory clarity rather than a challenger to it. The company say it has contributed to the development of similar regulations in Kenya, Zambia, Morocco and Rwanda. It also says it holds regulatory approvals in Botswana, South Africa and several European jurisdictions. Its earlier funding rounds attracted backing from Coinbase and Block, the Jack Dorsey-led payments company formerly known as Square.
Chief executive Chris Maurice has repeatedly argued that, if properly regulated, stablecoins could significantly reduce the cost of cross-border remittances and improve access to US dollar liquidity for businesses operating in frontier markets.
The new capital, which swells Yellow Card’s equity base beyond $120m, comes as the stablecoin sector draws heightened attention from traditional finance. Standard Chartered has been expanding its digital asset custody and tokenisation services; SC Ventures has previously backed blockchain infrastructure companies. Sony Innovation Fund, meanwhile, has been actively investing in web3 and payments technology. That such groups are willing to back a firm that has navigated an at-times hostile regulatory environment in Africa is a signal that the opportunity in dollar stablecoin rails is seen as large enough to warrant the risk.
Maurice struck a forward-looking note: “This investment is a vote of confidence in what we’ve spent years building: the infrastructure that lets global businesses move money without a traditional correspondent banking. But the bigger opportunity now is connecting banks themselves to stablecoin rails. When institutions plug into this infrastructure, they’re not just modernizing payments, they’re unlocking dollar access for millions of businesses that traditional correspondent banking has left behind. Money should move at the speed and convenience of the internet, and increasingly, banks want to move with it.”
For Yellow Card, that next stage involves connecting a far broader network of banks and fintechs to its infrastructure, and proving that stablecoin-based dollar accounts can be a mainstream corporate treasury tool — not just a niche product for crypto-native firms. Its success may hinge as much on diplomacy with central banks as on the performance of the technology itself.