African Crypto Exchange, Yellow Card Closes $15M Series A to expand across Africa

Pan-African cryptocurrency exchange, Yellow Card, has announced a $15M Series A, the largest ever by an African cryptocurrency exchange, to ramp up hiring and continue its expansion across the continent.

The round was led by Valar Ventures, Third Prime, and Castle Island Ventures with participation from Square, Inc., Blockchain.com Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, BlockFi, Fabric Ventures, Raba Partnership, MoonPay, GreenHouse Capital, and more.

Founded in 2016 by Chris Maurice and Justin Poiroux, with Munachi Ogueke joining the team later, Yellow Card makes it easy for anyone, anywhere in Africa to buy crypto using cash, mobile money, card, or bank transfer. Yellow Card enables anyone on the continent to buy, sell, spend, and store Bitcoin, Ethereum, or USDT to solve basic financial service issues.

The startup is present in 12 African countries including Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana, Zambia etc., with plans to expand into more countries.

The startup claims to have had nearly 30x increase in users across Africa since the start of the pandemic.

“Our mission has always been to make cryptocurrency accessible anywhere and everywhere across the African continent,” Chris Maurice, co-founder and CEO of Yellow Card said. “Now, we have the backing to make that a reality, alongside an amazing team of investors who share our vision.”

Since launching in Nigeria in 2018, the U.S. and Africa-based Yellow Card team has sought to make cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT Stablecoin accessible to anyone in Africa.

“Africa is poised to benefit tremendously from cryptocurrency’s potential to transform financial services,” Valar Ventures’ James Fitzgerald said. “We believe in Yellow Card’s vision of a Pan-African cryptocurrency platform. What cemented the deal is their multi-national team, which we believe has the local knowledge, technical expertise, and unequivocal passion to address the basic financial services needs of the continent.”

This news comes on the back of a new report from Chainalysis, which listed six African nations in the top 20 on the Global Crypto Adoption Index. Yellow Card wants everyone to know that Africa should be seen as a prominent region for crypto adoption.

“This raise is a validation that Africa has a major place in the crypto industry,” said Yellow Card’s Chief Bitcoin Officer, Munachi Ogueke. “With the access that Yellow Card brings, powered by this raise, we can now let crypto proliferate and be a reliable enabler for people across the continent.”