Visa, Yellow Card, and the Quiet Reinvention of African Payments

Compaytence Global Payments Brief June 23, 2025

Visa’s partnership with Yellow Card marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of Africa’s cross-border payments. This is not another pilot program or isolated crypto experiment. With over $225 million in stablecoin volume already processed, Visa is building new payment rails — with Africa now taking a central role in their development.

The Fragmented Landscape of African Payments

Africa’s payment systems remain notoriously inefficient. Moving money across borders often involves multiple intermediaries, high fees, and long delays. Local currencies are volatile, and dollar liquidity is scarce — a persistent challenge for businesses trading internationally.

Stablecoins, and in particular Visa’s adoption of USDC for 24/7 settlement, offer a potential breakthrough. Transactions that once took days or required navigating restrictive banking windows can now move instantly, on blockchain rails, without friction or currency risk.

The opportunity is vast. Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the most mobile-first regions in the world, yet 350 million people are still underbanked. Businesses — especially SMEs — face persistent barriers in accessing efficient cross-border payment infrastructure.

Visa’s Strategy in Action

Visa’s new collaboration with Yellow Card is designed to address exactly these gaps. The licensed African exchange, which operates in more than 20 countries, brings local expertise and regulatory access — critical for building stablecoin-based treasury, liquidity, and cross-border payment solutions.

“We believe that every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy,”— Godfrey Sullivan, Head of Product and Solutions, Visa CEMEA

Visa’s stablecoin services rely on USDC issued on public blockchains, enabling global businesses to settle payments continuously — beyond banking hours, weekends, and regional restrictions. For African merchants and consumers, this model promises a new level of flexibility and efficiency.

“Together with Visa, we’re building a bridge between traditional finance and the future of money movement,”— Chris Maurice, CEO, Yellow Card

Kenya’s Forward-Looking Regulatory Model

Yet no technology operates in a vacuum. Regulatory clarity is essential if stablecoins are to move from pilot phase to mainstream adoption in African markets.

Kenya’s draft Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Bill is widely viewed as the continent’s most progressive attempt to regulate digital assets. It introduces clear licensing requirements for exchanges, AML protocols, consumer protections, and operational guidelines — providing exactly the legal certainty that institutional players require.

“Those use cases are going to really change the industry. And if other countries follow suit, then Kenya is going to be a hub for a lot of digital-asset activities,”— Edline Murungi, Senior Legal Counsel, Yellow Card

If Kenya’s framework is adopted more broadly, it could accelerate stablecoin innovation across key African markets — giving Visa and its partners a clearer path to scale these services.

Beyond Yellow Card: Visa’s Long-Term Bet

Visa’s push into stablecoins is not limited to Yellow Card. The firm’s recent investment in South African B2B platform BVNK, and the launch of its Visa Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP), reveal a larger strategy: to integrate tokenized money directly into the core of global payment infrastructure.

What is emerging is not a parallel crypto ecosystem, but the modernization of existing financial rails — blending blockchain-native settlement with the scale and trust of Visa’s network, which processed $16 trillion in payment volume last year.

The Road Ahead

Yellow Card expects to pilot its first stablecoin-based services in at least one African country by the end of 2025, with broader market expansion in 2026 as licensing and infrastructure evolve.

The implications are significant. Africa is already one of the world’s most dynamic regions for mobile payments and crypto adoption — driven by real economic needs. Stablecoins offer a bridge between fragmented domestic markets and the global digital economy.

As Visa and Yellow Card quietly reshape the mechanics of cross-border payments, Africa is positioning itself at the forefront of the next generation of financial infrastructure.

— Compaytence