Coinbase partners with stablecoin exchange Yellow Card in African expansion

Coinbase has partnered with African stablecoin exchange Yellow Card — a Coinbase portfolio company — to expand access to its products in emerging economies, beginning with 20 countries across the continent.

Starting in February, the partnership will provide more than half of Africa's population access to USDC purchases through the Coinbase Wallet app. It will also let app users send the stablecoin without fees via email and popular messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, iMessage and Telegram.

Yellow Card users can also buy USDC on Base, a Coinbase-incubated Ethereum layer 2 that offers cheaper transactions.

"Many of these countries are high-inflation and remittance-dependent," Coinbase said in an official blog post. "This partnership with its emphasis on USDC will increase economic freedom in places that have lacked it, and help stand up a modern financial system where one hasn’t existed."

Yellow Card announced its $1.5 million seed round — which included Polychain Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and the Celo Ecosystem Fund — back in August 2020. The Block also reported its $40 million Series B funding round, led by Polychain, in September 2022. That followed a $15 million Series A the year prior.

Coinbase's international expansion

The San Francisco-based crypto exchange noted that its partnership with Yellow Card is part of its "Go Broad, Go Deep" strategy, which focuses on compliant international expansion.

It comes after the exchange announced last week that it plans to acquire a MiFID-licensed entity to expand its derivatives offering in the European Union. The exchange currently only offers spot trading in the EU, and such a license would allow Coinbase to offer crypto-based derivatives in Europe. 

In December, Coinbase expanded its international offerings by unveiling spot trading for non-U.S. institutions. Coinbase's international arm began offering derivatives trading to non-U.S. institutional clients last year.