Yellow Card, the Africa-founded stablecoin payments company, has raised $40 million in strategic equity funding to expand its infrastructure connecting commercial banks to blockchain-based payment rails.
The round included SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's venture arm), Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital, and Blockchain Capital. It brings Yellow Card's total equity financing to more than $120 million, at a valuation significantly higher than the $200 million it carried in 2022 but below $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Targeting Swift's Turf
Yellow Card CEO Chris Maurice said the company is working with commercial banks globally to use stablecoins for cross-border dollar movements, positioning itself as a challenger to legacy interbank systems like Swift.
"The very near future state for this industry is one where payments flow directly between banks onchain, without B2B payments companies or other payment service companies in the flow at all," Maurice said in an interview.
Swift, which processes over 53 million secure messaging instructions daily for nearly 11,500 financial institutions, has itself begun testing blockchain ledger systems. The interbank service announced last month that it was piloting blockchain payment systems with 17 global banks across six continents.
Yellow Card's bet is that banks will prefer stablecoin-based infrastructure over Swift's legacy messaging — or at least use both in parallel — as the efficiency and cost benefits of onchain settlement become undeniable.
Product Expansion
The company will use the new capital to expand its Global USD Accounts product, which allows businesses to hold dollars, swap stablecoins, manage treasury operations, and collect or disburse local currencies through domestic payment rails in more than 50 countries.
Yellow Card also plans to add stablecoin and local payment mechanisms in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, broadening beyond its African roots.
Maurice said the company's transaction flows have historically been split roughly evenly between corporate clients and large financial institutions. Bank volumes are now growing faster as large institutions adopt the platform, he noted.
A Decade of Building
Founded in 2016, Yellow Card has spent nearly a decade building stablecoin infrastructure across fragmented regulatory jurisdictions in emerging markets. The company holds licenses, authorizations, or registrations in 22 jurisdictions and has facilitated more than $10 billion in transactions since inception.
The company's growth trajectory mirrors the broader adoption of stablecoins as payment infrastructure. USDT and USDC collectively process trillions of dollars in annual settlement volume, and stablecoins have become a critical tool for dollar access in regions where local currencies are volatile or capital controls restrict traditional banking channels.
Standard Chartered's participation in the round is notable. The bank has been one of the most forward-looking among global financial institutions on digital assets, having published research predicting stablecoin market cap could reach $1 trillion and having invested in multiple blockchain infrastructure companies through SC Ventures.
The raise also comes at a moment when stablecoin regulation is crystallizing globally. The U.S. passed the GENIUS Act establishing a federal framework for payment stablecoins, and the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation has begun full enforcement. Regulatory clarity is accelerating bank adoption by reducing compliance uncertainty.
For Yellow Card, the $40 million raise is both a validation and an acceleration — a chance to prove that stablecoins can move from crypto-native niches into the plumbing of the global financial system.