Visa Expands USDC Stablecoin Services Across Africa via Yellow Card Partnership

Visa is accelerating stablecoin adoption in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) through a strategic collaboration with Yellow Card, a licensed African cryptocurrency exchange. The partnership will pilot USDC-based payment solutions in Africa by late 2025, expanding on Visa's existing infrastructure that has already processed over $225 million in stablecoin transactions since 2023.

The payments leader now provides 24/7 USDC settlement capabilities for financial institutions in the CEMEA region, utilizing Circle's dollar-pegged stablecoin on public blockchains. This around-the-clock functionality solves a critical limitation of traditional finance—operational hour restrictions—while optimizing cross-border payments and liquidity management.

Visa's innovative approach bypasses pre-transaction conversions by enabling direct USDC payouts to merchants through partners such as Worldpay and Nuvei. This builds on the company's previous work with Crypto.com, where it enabled crypto-to-USDC conversions for card payments, but now extends these capabilities further into merchant settlement networks.