Visa and Yellow Card Join Forces to Expand Stablecoin Payments Across Emerging Markets

Visa has partnered with pan-African fintech Yellow Card to integrate stablecoin payments into its Visa Direct platform across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA). The move signals a deepening commitment by the global payment giant to use blockchain-based assets to modernize traditional cross-border transactions—especially in emerging markets.

Through the partnership, businesses operating in countries where Yellow Card is active will soon be able to hold and transfer stablecoins like USDC directly via Visa’s existing infrastructure. The integration promises to lower transaction costs, improve speed, and enable 24/7 money movement.

A Bet on Africa’s Quiet Stablecoin Revolution

The significance of this move is particularly strong in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where stablecoin use has quietly surged in the face of currency volatility, remittance challenges, and limited dollar liquidity.

Recent estimates suggest SSA receives over $500 billion in monthly stablecoin remittances. In Ethiopia, small businesses are increasingly turning to stablecoins for trade, leading to a 180% year-over-year rise in low-value cross-border transfers. In Nigeria, the USDT stablecoin consistently ranks among the most-traded currencies on local crypto exchanges, often serving as a hedge against the naira’s instability.

Yellow Card CEO Chris Maurice described the partnership as a pivotal moment:

> “Traditional payment companies continue to question not ‘if’ they need a stablecoin strategy, but how quickly they can deploy one.”

Visa Positions Itself for the Future of Global Payments

Visa has been quietly building toward this stablecoin moment since 2021, when it ran a pilot settlement with Crypto.com using USDC. Since then, it has processed over $225 million in stablecoin-based transactions, added support for faster blockchains like Solana, and opened the doors to wider institutional use.

Now, in 2025, the company appears to be doubling down.

> “We believe that every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy,” said Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s SVP and Head of Product for CEMEA.

Visa’s broader strategy appears to be to bridge the gap between traditional finance and blockchain-based solutions—not by replacing banks, but by giving them tools to participate. As stablecoin volume hit $4.1 trillion globally last month—surpassing Visa’s own quarterly transaction volume—the trend has become too big to ignore.

From Shopify and Stripe’s new USDC payment pilots to Africa’s cNGN rollout, the stablecoin experiment is rapidly shifting from fringe to foundational. With this partnership, Visa and Yellow Card are positioning themselves at the center of that transition.