Visa has partnered with Yellow Card Financial to enhance stablecoin infrastructure and promote digital dollar adoption across 20 African markets. This collaboration seeks to address key challenges such as currency volatility and dollar shortages by enabling near-instant, cost-efficient stablecoin transactions using Visa Direct and Yellow Card's licensed networks.
The partnership will begin with a pilot program in an undisclosed African country later this year, followed by wider rollouts in 2026. This initiative aims to provide corporations with improved liquidity management and consumers with affordable remittance options, lowering typical fees charged by traditional money transfer providers.
Yellow Card, Africa's first licensed stablecoin payments orchestrator, has processed over $6 billion in transactions since 2019 using USDT and USDC. Visa plans to leverage this existing infrastructure while layering compliance to strengthen its stablecoin offerings, which have already processed $225 million in USDC settlements since 2023.
The move is a strategic development in modernizing cross-border payments in underserved African markets, positioning Visa and Yellow Card ahead of competitors like Circle’s Onafriq partnership, which supports USDC rails in 40 African countries. The growth of stablecoin usage is driven by ongoing foreign exchange challenges and limited access to U.S. dollars in Sub-Saharan Africa, where stablecoins now account for 43% of total crypto transaction volume.