Africa's blockchain and crypto space is getting much-needed venture capital at a really tough time for startups-some of which have retreated from specific markets or entirely shut up shop in the face of problems such as a rough regulatory environment, macros, or downright mismanagement.

There is a bump: Yellow Card, the U.S.-based crypto platform founded in Nigeria in 2019, since becoming Africa's most funded cryptocurrency exchange. The company confirmed to TechCrunch it has raised $33 million in Series C investment from lead decade-old venture firm Blockchain Capital, whose bets include Coinbase, Kraken, OpenSea, and more recently, Worldcoin. This brings Yellow Card's total funding to at least $88 million.

This investment in Yellow Card blockchain exchange comes at a very exciting time as the crypto platform, giving retail customers access to crypto and stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, and PYUSD in 20 African countries using local currencies, is doubling down on business customers-a shift it started two years ago with a $40m Series B fundraise. In that round, Yellow Card was valued at $200 million; Maurice wouldn't break down how much but says "it's a pretty big bump from the Series B".

The big shift for us has been our focus on working predominantly with businesses now, co-founder and CEO Chris Maurice told TechCrunch. "When we started, we targeted the B2C market to serve retail customers. However we realized that the real users who benefit the most from this technology are businesses."

Yellow Card served retail customers for the first couple of years after its launch. But the pivot came in when the company, which had 1 million customers in 2021, according to Maurice, began seeing how horribly expensive it was servicing retail customers on the platform. While any crypto customer, large or small, had to run sanction screening, KYC, and chain analysis screening, when it came to volume, the margins were too thin to create a business model that could work using small retail users. Smaller businesses up to larger ones transacted in rising volumes and paid steeper gas fees, while Yellow Card has raised its minimum transaction limits in a deliberate effort to contract its sprawling retail network and make it more attractive to businesses that use the platform for treasury and access stablecoins.

Usage of our platform didn't change-it was more about our shift in targeting and positioning," replied Maurice when asked whether Yellow Card's description of itself from a cryptocurrency exchange platform to a licensed stablecoin on/off ramp was the result of a change in how customers used the platform.

"We are now closer to what our customers, especially the businesses, actually use us for, and that is treasury management and access to stablecoins. That is what really made us shift on messaging." B2B is the new business
Yellow Card currently serves around 30 000 businesses spread across Africa and internationally to assist them in making payments and managing their treasury. But the platform majorly achieves this through stablecoins.
At face value, it would look like Yellow Card has gone back to the original business rather than its founding vision of taking crypto to the masses. Maurice argues that the eight-year-old company is steered that way but is going about it differently.

First off, an individual and small business aren't mutually exclusive, such as an individual owning a small kiosk in Africa.

That's why, even though Yellow Card made a slight pivot away from that definition, its customer base still skews from a vendor selling imported shoes to some of the continent's largest corporates-and everyone in between. "The way business and personal use blend together on the continent creates a very different dynamic, making our approach relevant for both groups," noted the CEO. Second, the company believes that servicing business means the fact that people will derive more benefits from the technology while interacting directly with it. For instance, in terms of treasury management, companies involved in importing food, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods will make essentials cheaper and within reach to more people even though individuals aren't necessarily using crypto themselves. In other words, the average person benefits more from cheaper goods and services enabled by businesses using Yellow Card than they do from the technology itself.

While Sub-Saharan Africa is still far from the remainder of the world in terms of crypto volume – the region counts for less than 3% of total transactions made between July 2023 and 2024 – it has more practical and compelling use cases for crypto than in the West. Nigeria, for example, ranks as having the second-highest crypto adoption globally, while Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa all feature in the top 30, according to a recent report from Chainalysis.

Specifically, stablecoins have become the hub of utility within Africa's crypto economy. So how does it play? Most African nations have notoriously unstable local currencies and little exposure to the dollar. Well, what stablecoins pegged to the dollar, like USDT and USDC, offer is a means of preserving value via hedging inflation and currency devaluation and enabling international payments and cross-border trade for business and retail customers.

Stablecoins Utility Drive Adoption

What has definitely contributed has been the utility of stablecoins and the demand for our technology from businesses moving larger sums," says Maurice. Yellow Card's transaction volumes thus skyrocketed from $1.7 billion early last year to over $3 billion as a result. Such huge growth has reflected sevenfold on the company's revenues, which it realizes through the spread between the different currency prices. Its revenue is now "well into eight figures.

For us, it is majorly utility. Stablecoins are useful. People need them, the CEO replied. They solve problems for people and businesses. People are adopting this technology because they need it. This is not a speculation use case. It's a utility use case.
There are two main products to which the core on-and-off-ramp is bucketed and the API suite, which Maurice, on the call, playfully terms "Africa-as-a-service." The API suite integrates Africa's banking and mobile money infrastructure, makes it accessible to global companies like Coinbase and Block, and allows them to on-and-off-ramp their customers on the continent using Yellow Card's rails.

No doubt, Yellow Card's latest funding rounds validate the current progress of stablecoins in Africa and its applicability around the world. The firm will then strive to cash in more on the opportunities that the technology affords it by perfecting its flagship product and API (boasting a widget built on top of it).

"The future of payments lies in fast, affordable rails for everyone powered by open networks," said Aleks Larsen, General Partner at Blockchain Capital. "We couldn't be more excited to back Yellow Card as they bring Africa on-chain with stablecoins."

Yellow Card, a self-proclaimed largest, first licensed stablecoin on/off ramp platform in Africa, added that Polychain Capital, Block, Inc., Winklevoss Capital, Third Prime Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Blockchain Coinvestors and Hutt Capital also participated in the Series C funding.".

It noted that the funding will give it the money to develop new products, strengthen its team and systems, and continue to lead engagement with regulators across the continent.

It is regulation that poses the ultimate existential threat to crypto platforms across the globe. Companies such as Binance and Coinbase are being sued for allegedly offering unregistered securities in the U.S. While crypto remains severely restricted in various other countries, such as China, with further crackdowns on mining and exchanges.

Another reason crypto platforms need to keep talking with regulators is the recent debacle between Binance and Nigeria-the country has held one of the crypto platform's executives, Tigran Gambaryan, for eight months over allegations that Binance was undermining its local currency.

Maurice proceeds by asserting that even though there exist rigid and soft rules to govern the way people apply crypto in various markets, African regulators have been more innovative and are better placed with respect to understanding the new technology as opposed to other regions. To support the standpoint advanced is the recent licensing guidelines for Nigeria, the framework countries of South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, and Zambia, amongst others followed by the introduction of a sandbox environment in Ghana.

Clearly, our hope would be that we'll continue to keep seeing and develop clear regulatory frameworks around the world. I think Africa gets a very bad rap in terms of regulation. Actually, really more and more of a crypto-friendly environment than in the U.S. for now, said Maurice.