Visa announced on July 16, 2025, that it is partnering with Yellow Card, a leading pan-African fintech, to explore stablecoin use cases and opportunities across markets where Yellow Card is licensed to operate. The partnership aims to help streamline treasury operations and enhance liquidity management. At the recent Visa Payments Forum CEMEA 2025, Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, sat down with Chris Maurice, Co-Founder and CEO of Yellow Card, to share insights on the transformative potential of stablecoins.

Yellow Card started with Bitcoin for payments in June 2019, but later listed USDT in 2020. The company saw a significant shift in volume, with 70% Bitcoin and 30% USDT within a week of launching USDT, and 99% USDT within four months. Chris Maurice attributed this shift to the fact that stablecoins offered the same technology without price fluctuations, making it easier for clients to use assets for payments due to difficult international bank transfers and limited dollar access.

The company has found product-market fit for stablecoins with businesses outside the crypto industry, including a major food producer on the African continent and a pharmaceutical company that imports drugs from India. Yellow Card helped these companies facilitate transfers via stablecoins, moving money instantly to the UK and Switzerland to enable critical imports and settle invoices.

The July 2025 discussion described an evolving regulatory environment in the markets served by Yellow Card. It identified licensing regimes in South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Mauritius and Namibia, and regulatory sandboxes that were operating or planned in Rwanda, Zambia, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania.