Visa and Yellow Card to Explore Stablecoin Opportunities in Africa

Visa has partnered with licensed stablecoin payments orchestrator Yellow Card to explore stablecoin use cases and opportunities across the African markets in which Yellow Card is licensed to operate.

Together, the companies will seek opportunities to help streamline treasury operations and enhance liquidity management as well as test integration opportunities with Visa Direct to investigate cross-border payment options, Visa said in a Wednesday (June 18) press release.

“As one of the world’s largest digital payments networks, Visa Direct enables secure and seamless funds delivery across more than 190 countries and territories,” the release said.

In its own blog post about the partnership, Yellow Card said it operates in more than 20 African countries and provides consumers, businesses and developers with access to stablecoins.

“Traditional payment companies continue to question not ‘if’ they need a stablecoin strategy, but how quickly they can deploy one,” Yellow Card Co-founder and CEO Chris Maurice said in the post. “We are thrilled to partner with Visa to help realize the potential of stablecoins technology in emerging economies.”

In an earlier, separate collaboration, PayPal said in November that Yellow Card would be one of the first companies to use the PayPal USD stablecoin to settle cross-border money transfers via a service offered through PayPal’s Xoom cross-border payments business.

PayPal integrated with Yellow Card in 2023, making Yellow Card the first FinTech in Africa to list PYUSD.

Together with its partnership with Yellow Card, Visa announced in its Wednesday press release that it has also advanced its stablecoin initiatives by expanding its stablecoin settlement solution to select issuers and acquirers in the Central and Eastern European, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region.

This enables U.S. dollar cross-border transactions through blockchain technology, according to the release.

“In 2025, we believe that every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy,” Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s senior vice president and head of product and solution for CEMEA, said in the release. “As more players in the payments ecosystem explore this powerful new technology, Visa stands ready to help our partners navigate the transformation, bringing the scale, trust and innovation needed to help build the next generation of global payments.”