Fintech company Yellow Card has raised $40 million to accelerate its global expansion, strengthen its stablecoin infrastructure and pursue regulatory approvals across key markets.
Mrs Lasbery Oludimu, Group Vice-President, Operations and Managing Director, Yellow Card Nigeria, disclosed this at a media conference in Lagos, saying the latest funding had pushed the company’s total equity financing above $120 million.
Oludimu said the investment would enable Yellow Card to expand beyond Africa into Latin America, Asia-Pacific and the United Arab Emirates, as the company seeks to strengthen its position as a provider of stablecoin and digital-asset payment infrastructure.
She said Yellow Card currently operates in more than 50 markets, including over 20 African countries, with businesses increasingly using its infrastructure for cross-border payments and other financial services.
The company had completely moved away from its former business-to-consumer model to a business-to-business model, serving registered organizations rather than individual customers.
“Yellow Card is no longer a crypto exchange; we are a stablecoin infrastructure provider focused on the technology itself,” Oludimu said.
The company no longer offered investment products, cryptocurrency trading or peer-to-peer services after shutting down its former crypto exchange, Yellow Card’s infrastructure included payment APIs, fiat settlement rails, wallet infrastructure and customised local stablecoin issuance.
According to her, financial institutions could also use the company’s infrastructure to issue branded stablecoins for internal payments and other customer-facing products.
Oludimu cited South Africa’s Absa Bank as an institution exploring stablecoin issuance, stressing that regulation remained crucial to such developments.
“Without regulation, nothing can happen. We cannot have all the best ideas, but regulation will help us roll out products to the public,” she said.
She said Yellow Card was prioritizing regulatory compliance as it expanded, particularly in markets developing frameworks for stablecoins and digital-asset payments.
Oludimu said the company had applications or ongoing regulatory engagements in several markets, including Nigeria, Namibia and Mozambique, while also participating in regulatory sandboxes.
Yellow Card was pursuing licences in jurisdictions where formal regulatory frameworks existed and working with regulators in markets without established digital-asset frameworks.
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The company recently secured regulatory authorization in Switzerland, alongside virtual-asset and money-service registrations in other jurisdictions.
Within Africa, Yellow Card held a crypto-asset service provider licence in South Africa and a virtual-asset service provider licence in Botswana.
She added that the company had voluntarily registered with financial intelligence and data-protection authorities in markets where such registration was permitted.
Yellow Card’s compliance framework covered anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, sanctions screening, fraud prevention and transaction monitoring.
The leadership had been recognized on Fortune’s inaugural Crypto Innovators list, describing the recognition as independent third-party validation.
She listed Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, Thunes and MoneyGram among the company’s strategic partners, while Standard Chartered and Sony were among its major investors.
The latest funding would strengthen connectivity between financial institutions and global businesses seeking compliant stablecoin payment solutions.
Oludimu said Africa remained important to Yellow Card despite its global expansion, noting that the company planned to make significant further investments in Nigeria.
She said Yellow Card was awaiting relevant regulatory approvals before scaling its operations and introducing more products in the Nigerian market.
On regulation in Nigeria, Oludimu said the emergence of stablecoins as payment infrastructure had increased interest from both securities and banking regulators.
The Securities and Exchange Commission initially provided the principal regulatory framework for digital assets, while the Central Bank of Nigeria was becoming increasingly relevant because of the payment component of the company’s operations.
“CBN is focused on payments. As long as your infrastructure is cross-border payments, CBN is focused on payments,” she said.
Yellow Card was therefore engaging with both regulatory structures, adding that the company’s priority was compliance, regardless of which agency ultimately supervised specific activities. “Whoever regulates us is not our problem; we are interested in regulation,” she said.
Mr Jackson Osaro, Country Manager, Yellow Card Nigeria, in his closing remarks, assured stakeholders that the company would properly utilize the latest investment.
NAN
