Yellow Card raises $40 million to link banks to stablecoin processing

Stablecoin infrastructure provider Yellow Card has raised $40 million in strategic funding from a consortium including SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's venture arm), Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. With this round, the company's total equity financing has surpassed $120 million over the ten years since its 2016 founding.

The company has already processed more than $10 billion in transactions across its network and holds licenses and regulatory authorizations in 22 jurisdictions. The fresh capital will go toward scaling its Global USD Accounts product — an end-to-end dollar account for businesses that lets users hold dollars, convert stablecoins, manage treasury operations, and collect or disburse payments in local currencies through domestic payment rails across 50-plus countries. A separate portion of the funding will go toward expanding stablecoin and local payment options in Latin America and Asia-Pacific.

The very near future state for this industry is one where payments flow directly between banks onchain, without intermediaries

— Chris Maurice, CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card

• Round size: $40 million; total company funding now exceeds $120 million
• Since 2016, Yellow Card has processed over $10 billion in transactions and holds licenses in 22 jurisdictions
• Funds will scale Global USD Accounts and fund expansion into Latin America and Asia-Pacific

In our view, behind the marketing language about "payments flowing directly between banks onchain" sits a very concrete, long-overdue problem rather than an abstract technology thesis: for many African businesses, traditional correspondent banking has been a bottleneck for years — transfers routed through chains of intermediaries, taking days and costing a meaningful cut of the amount sent. That's exactly why Standard Chartered's participation — a bank with half a century of history operating in Africa — reads less like a speculative venture bet and more like an acknowledgment that, for this specific region, stablecoin rails solve a real access-to-dollar-liquidity problem, not a hypothetical one.

The company was built around Africa from the start, a region where we've already noted strong demand for alternative ways to access dollars: Africa overtook Latin America to lead the world in P2P bitcoin trading. At the same time, major payment networks are converging on the same infrastructure from the other end of the market — for instance, Visa expanded Visa Direct's stablecoin capabilities through a partnership with Zerohash — meaning traditional banks and payment giants, and startups like Yellow Card, are effectively meeting at the same infrastructure from opposite directions.

For now, Yellow Card's valuation sits above the $200 million it was valued at in 2022, but still short of unicorn status — so this round is best read as investors betting on the company's long-term infrastructure role, not as recognition of success it's already achieved.

This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.