African crypto exchange Yellow Card partners with Block

Block, the publicly traded company behind popular payment apps Cash App and Square, announced on Wednesday a partnership with Yellow Card, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Africa, to facilitate cross-border payments between 16 countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa.

In March, Yellow Card and Block’s TBD, an offshoot of the payments giant that specializes in developing software for crypto and Web3 projects, tested their cross-border payment infrastructure to send money between the U.S., Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. The system leverages stablecoins and Bitcoin to decrease the fees needed to send money across borders, TBD says.

Yellow Card provided the software to plug into each of the 16 countries’ financial networks, and TBD provided the “bridge” between each of the countries, Emily Chiu, TBD’s cofounder and COO, told Fortune. Specifically, TBD designed its technological “bridge” to be legally compliant and adhere to international and national money-transfer regulations, legal and technological expertise that Yellow Card doesn’t have.

“Developers don’t want to worry about compliance jurisdiction by jurisdiction,” she told Fortune in an interview. “Developers just want to build and make sure that it works.”

Block’s partnership with Yellow Card comes two years after cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitterinvested in the African exchange. Meanwhile, Block has been pursuing a broader strategy of cross-border payments, including remittances. That includes leading a funding round for Gridless, a Bitcoin mining firm in Kenya that hopes to use Bitcoin mining to encourage the development of renewable energy projects.

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