Yellow Card has raised $40 million in strategic equity funding to expand its stablecoin payment infrastructure, betting that commercial banks will increasingly adopt blockchain technology to move dollars across borders.

The funding round included SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's venture arm), Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital, and Blockchain Capital. It brings Yellow Card's total equity financing to more than $120 million since the company was founded 10 years ago, according to a person close to the matter who spoke to CoinDesk. The valuation is significantly higher than the $200 million figure assigned in 2022 but remains below $1 billion. Neither Yellow Card CEO Chris Maurice nor the U.S.-based company's public relations team confirmed the valuation.

Yellow Card is working with commercial banks globally to use stablecoins and onchain payments to bring more dollars into markets and replace legacy payment systems. The company is positioning itself as a competitor to Swift, the interbank messaging service that processes over 53 million secure instructions per day for nearly 11,500 financial institutions and facilitates trillions of dollars in global bank transactions. Swift said last month it was testing its first blockchain ledger. The move signals that even legacy interbank infrastructure operators are exploring distributed ledger technology as stablecoin-based payment corridors gain traction with financial institutions.

"The very near future state for this industry is one where payments flow directly between banks onchain, without B2B payments companies or other payment service companies in the flow at all," Maurice said in comments to CoinDesk via Telegram.

Maurice, a former Pokémon card seller, told CoinDesk in a 2024 podcast interview that he and Justin Poiroux, the firm's chief technology officer, founded Yellow Card to challenge big banks and the Swift network.

The new capital will be deployed to expand Global USD Accounts, Yellow Card's dollar account product for businesses, and to add stablecoin and local payment mechanisms in Latin America and Asia-Pacific. Global USD Accounts allows businesses to hold dollars, hold and swap stablecoins, manage treasury operations, and collect or disburse local currencies through domestic payment rails in more than 50 countries. The push into Latin America and Asia-Pacific targets regions where local currency volatility and limited access to dollar liquidity have driven demand for stablecoin-based settlement among businesses and financial institutions.

Maurice said the company's transaction flows have historically been split roughly evenly between corporates and large financial institutions using its treasury-management and payments infrastructure. Bank volumes are now growing faster as large institutions increasingly adopt the company's system, he noted.

Yellow Card began its operations in Africa, where it built operations across fragmented, country-by-country regulatory jurisdictions. Since its founding in 2016, the firm said it has facilitated more than $10 billion in transactions and holds licenses, authorizations, or registrations in 22 jurisdictions. The company primarily focuses on emerging markets, where cross-border dollar settlement has historically relied on correspondent banking relationships that can be slow and costly compared with onchain alternatives.

Source: CoinDesk