New Partnerships in Stablecoin Payments: Yellow Card, an Africa-based stablecoin payments orchestrator, has teamed up with Visa to enhance cross-border payment solutions and financial infrastructure. This partnership aims to explore the use cases of stablecoins that can improve treasury operations, liquidity management, and cross-border money movement.
New Use Cases for Stablecoins
Yellow Card operates in over 20 African countries and supports businesses through its licensed stablecoin on- and off-ramps. Its mission is to enable international payments, treasury management, and USD liquidity access via stablecoins.
The Role of Visa in Stablecoin Adoption
Visa has partnered with Yellow Card to foster the growth of stablecoin technologies in global economies where traditional payment companies are increasingly exploring this technology. Visa aims to accelerate digital payments in the CEMEA region, recognizing that financial institutions need a robust stablecoin strategy.
Strengthening Financial Infrastructure
This collaboration has the potential to reinforce Yellow Card’s position as a key financial gateway and infrastructure provider in emerging markets. It follows previous work with Lightspark, which integrated Yellow Card’s Payments API into Lightspark Extend, enabling UMA network users to send and receive payments across 20 African countries.
The Cryptocurrency Regulatory Environment on the Continent
African nations adopt varying approaches toward crypto and stablecoins. While Nigeria and South Africa have taken regulatory steps, many other countries remain less supportive or are inactive, leading to market uncertainty. Nigeria’s Central Bank has temporarily prohibited commercial banks from facilitating crypto transactions until 2023, yet the country remains a leader in crypto adoption with an estimated 10.3% of its population owning digital assets.