Speaking at the inaugural Bloomberg Africa Business Summit in Johannesburg on Tuesday (Nov. 18), Chris Maurice said this shift is happening as international trade pivots away from the American dollar.
“The user experience of the dollar sucks,” said Maurice, whose comments were reported by Bloomberg News.
“It’s not a fun currency to use, especially internationally,” the founder of the stablecoin payments company said, noting the fees required for international transfers on the Swift system.
“You’re dealing with intermediary banks, you’re dealing with SWIFT, you’re dealing with systems that just don’t work,” Maurice said.
Founded in 2016, Yellow Card operates in Africa and other emerging markets. Maurice said stablecoin technology settled close $17 trillion in transactions in 2024, with six of the top 20 countries that use stablecoins in Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.
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The report added that Yellow Card has moved into markets like Brazil, India and Mexico, as it banks on higher demand for dollar-pegged digital assets in volatile economies. The company has in the last year launched partnerships with Visa and PayPal to promote stablecoin usage.
As Bloomberg notes, the use of stablecoins has ballooned as a more reliable form of cryptocurrency. Advocates say these tokens allow for faster payments and lower transaction costs. However, their rising popularity has led to warnings from regulators and watchdogs that they could hinder monetary policy and even bring about a run on traditionally safe assets.
As PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, stablecoins now represent more than $250 billion in circulating value, though that’s just a sliver compared in terms of worldwide money movement.
“What has held them back hasn’t been utility, as they already power billions of dollars in daily volume, but orchestration,” that report said. “Most businesses don’t want to hold crypto wallets, deal with gas fees or expose themselves to digital asset regulation. They want the speed and savings of stablecoins with the familiarity of embedded payments systems.”
Even as payment systems have evolved, they still operate on traditional banking rails. Stablecoins, that report said, have introduced a new plumbing layer where asset transfer and settlement happen at the same time, programmatically and borderless.
“But the ability to orchestrate stablecoin payments at scale, all while routing, converting, reconciling and complying, still requires enterprise-grade infrastructure,” PYMNTS wrote.
