Africa-focused stablecoin infrastructure firm Yellow Card has closed a USD 40 million strategic funding round to expand its business into Latin America and Asia Pacific, the company said in a statement on 4 August 2026. The round takes total equity financing raised by the company to more than USD 120 million and marks one of the largest strategic financings for an Africa-headquartered digital-asset infrastructure provider to date.
Backers of the new round include SC Ventures, the innovation and investment arm of Standard Chartered, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital, alongside other strategic investors. The mix of a global systemic bank, a corporate technology fund and specialist digital-asset investors underlines the increasingly institutional profile of stablecoin infrastructure businesses and the growing appetite among established financial institutions for regulated exposure to the space.
GLOBAL USD ACCOUNTS AT THE CORE
Yellow Card said the proceeds will be used to scale its Global USD Accounts product, expand local payment rails and broaden currency coverage in Latin America and Asia Pacific. The Global USD Accounts, which allow businesses to hold and move dollar-denominated stablecoin balances against local currency rails, are already used by customers including Visa and Western Union, two of the most established names in cross-border payments.
The move takes the company beyond its African home markets, where it has built its reputation on providing regulated on- and off-ramps between local fiat currencies and dollar-linked stablecoins. Latin America and Asia Pacific both feature large populations exposed to currency volatility and constrained access to correspondent-banking dollar liquidity, dynamics that closely mirror the conditions Yellow Card first addressed in African markets and that have driven demand for stablecoin-based settlement rails.
Extending Global USD Accounts into these regions positions the company to serve corporates, payment companies and financial institutions that need to move dollars across borders quickly, without depending exclusively on traditional correspondent-banking channels. That value proposition has resonated in markets where correspondent-banking relationships have thinned in recent years, and where local dollar liquidity is scarce or expensive.
LICENCES ACROSS 22 JURISDICTIONS
Yellow Card said it holds licences, authorisations and registrations across 22 jurisdictions in North America, Europe and Africa. That regulatory footprint has become a differentiator as global banks and payment companies increasingly look for partners that can plug them into stablecoin flows without taking on unlicensed counterparties, and as regulators in multiple markets tighten expectations for digital-asset service providers.
The company positions itself as a business-to-business stablecoin infrastructure provider rather than a consumer wallet, focusing on treasury management, cross-border settlement and remittance flows. That focus is reflected in the profile of its named customers and in the composition of its investor base, which combines strategic corporates with specialist digital-asset investors.
The new funding round provides the balance-sheet capacity to enter jurisdictions where local rails and regulatory approvals must be built out ahead of commercial traction. Yellow Card said the announcement details, including the strategic rationale for expansion beyond Africa, are set out in a blog post published on its website alongside the formal press release. The scale of the round and the profile of participating investors underline the shift under way in the digital-asset industry from speculative retail-driven activity towards a more institutional payments infrastructure agenda.