African cryptocurrency exchange Yellow Card wants to be big. So big, in fact, that after raising a whopping $40 million in a series B funding round, the company says that it’s looking to become the first African crypto “unicorn” the world has ever seen.
Yellow Card Wants to Get Huge
A unicorn is any company worth approximately $1 billion or more. One of the firms that took part in the series B funding round was Poly Chain Capital, headed by Will Wolf, who as a partner of the enterprise, explained in a recent interview:
Yellow Card is the best executing team on the continent. We are impressed by the way they seamlessly adjust and adapt to the unique opportunities and demands of the various African markets. We’ve barely touched the surface of what is possible when it comes to crypto in Africa and we’re excited for what’s to come.
CEO of Yellow Card Chris Maurice also explained:
We are aiming for unicorn status by the end of 2023… Our team has done a great job of growing quickly across a notoriously difficult continent to expand across. We’ve done a great job of working in different markets and establishing a good local presence on the ground. The big picture is to change the way that money moves around the continent using crypto.
He continued with:
When we talk about new markets, of course, we still want to be in all 54 countries on the continent. That’s still the goal, but when we talk about new markets, we’re talking about offering more [ways] for people to [use] their crypto. Offering more basic financial services that people can access. For example, we already launched Yellow Pay and, essentially, what that does is it makes it easy for people to send money between any of the countries that we support using crypto. We’re looking to work with not just crypto exchanges, but any company that is doing anything within the broad financial sector on the continent whether it’s sending money to Africa or moving money around the continent. We’re pursuing B2B partnerships that allow other companies to use our rails to make things significantly easier for their users on the continent.
Keeping a Positive Attitude
Throughout his discussion about the company’s plans, Maurice clearly showed evidence of undying optimism by saying:
It’s really a challenge, at its core, to be able to plug in natively to these financial systems because, as you know, crypto is still not widely accepted as part of the broader financial system… I can tell you that regulators across the continent are starting to come across the fact that crypto is here to stay, and it’s the job of regulation to encourage this innovation while at the same time making it safer.
