African-based cryptocurrency exchange, Yellow Card, recently announced that it has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round, arguably the largest ever fund raised by an African crypto exchange. With its offices already present in about twelve different African countries, the capital will be dedicated to Yellow Card’s expansion of services to other countries within the continent.
The exchange company said that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has recorded a massive thirty times increase in its number of users, hence the need for an expansion project. Commenting further on the reasons behind the latest funding, Chris Maurice, co-founder of YellowCard, said:
Our mission has always been to make cryptocurrency accessible anywhere and everywhere across the African continent. Now, we have the backing to make that a reality, alongside an amazing team of investors who share our vision.
The funding round was led by three venture capital firms, namely Valar Ventures, Third Prime, and Castle Island, the trio of which led the funding round. Other participants include crypto-focused companies such as Square Inc., Blockchain.com Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, BlockFi, Fabric Ventures, Raba Partnership, MoonPay and GreenHouse Capital amongst others.
James Fitzgerald, co-founder of Valar Ventures, said the decision to invest was buoyed by the startup having a “multi-national team, which […] has the local knowledge, technical expertise, and unequivocal passion to address the basic financial services needs of the continent.”
Yellow Card’s Chief Bitcoin Officer, Munachi Ogueke, also commented on the development, stating that Africa’s place in the crypto industry has been validated and powered by Yellow Card’s funding round.
Although Yellow Card is among the first African cryptocurrency exchanges to raise this amount of capital in a funding round, some other crypto exchanges have raised much higher. For example, in a recent Series B funding round led by venture capital Digital Currency Group (DCG), Argentina-based Ripio exchange raised about $50 million.
