Visa × Yellow Card: Transforming Corporate Treasury in Emerging Markets

From Treasury Masterminds

June 2025 — Visa and Yellow Card have announced a strategic partnership to accelerate stablecoin adoption across Africa and the broader CEMEA region. Yellow Card, a licensed stablecoin orchestrator active in over 20 countries with more than $6 billion transacted since 2019 will leverage Visa’s network—including Visa Direct—to enable faster, cheaper blockchain-based USD (stablecoin) transfers

 Why stablecoins matter for corporate treasurers

1. Unlocking trapped funds
   In numerous emerging markets, strict capital controls, FX shortages, or regulatory frameworks often leave companies with USD revenues that cannot easily exit the country. By moving funds into dollar‑pegged stablecoins (e.g., USDC or USDT) via on‑ramps like Yellow Card, treasurers can transfer value borderlessly, bypassing local banking restrictions and enabling global liquidity without needing to convert back into local banks.
2. FX risk management
   Many emerging market currencies suffer from inflation and volatility. Holding funds in USD stablecoins shields the value from local devaluations. Treasury teams can maintain stablecoin balances until operational needs arise in USD or another currency, optimizing currency exposure with greater predictability.
3. Cost & speed efficiencies
   Traditional cross-border payments often carry 6–10 % fees and delays of several days. Visa and Yellow Card’s on-chain stablecoin rails promise near-instant, end-to-end settlement with dramatically reduced fees—estimated up to 80 % less than traditional SWIFT transfers. For treasurers needing rapid liquidity access, this can vastly improve working capital cycles.

How the stablecoin on-/off‑ramp works

Here’s a simplified flow:

Visa Direct integration means businesses can also pay employees or suppliers directly to bank/card-linked accounts using stablecoin settlement rails—blending blockchain efficiency with traditional payout infrastructure.

How this benefits corporate treasury teams

• 24/7 availability & speed: No more waiting for bank hours—transfers can happen nights and weekends.
• Reduced FX & counterparty risk: Treasury avoids exposure by holding stablecoins instead of volatile or illiquid local currency.
• Operational simplicity: A unified USD on‑chain wallet reduces the need for multiple foreign bank accounts.
• Visibility & auditability: On-chain transactions offer transparent, trivially reconciled records of receipts and payouts.

Emerging market context & future outlook

Stablecoins now represent 43‑50 % of crypto transaction volume in Sub‑Saharan Africa, driven largely by limited USD availability With Visa processing $225 million+ in stablecoin settlements since 2023 and plans to expand into more CEMEA markets through 2026 this collaboration signals a major shift in treasury infrastructure.

Nevertheless, regulatory clarity remains important—e.g., Ghana’s central bank recently issued warnings over unlicensed stablecoin providers, underscoring the need for treasury teams to partner with compliant, regulated entities

Bottom line

For corporate treasurers operating in emerging markets:

• Visa + Yellow Card stablecoin rails offer a compelling alternative to constrained banking systems.
• Funds trapped in local economies can be “freed” on-chain and redeployed globally.
• FX exposure and payment friction are reduced, driving efficiency.
• With Visa’s integration and regulatory engagement, stablecoins are moving from experimentation to transaction-grade on‑ramps.

This marks a pivotal moment: treasury teams can now harness digital USD rails, combining cryptocurrency resilience with traditional finance compliance—ushering in a new era for global liquidity and FX risk management.

In summary

The Visa × Yellow Card partnership delivers a corporate treasury-ready stablecoin infrastructure: opening trapped liquidity, mitigating FX volatility, and enabling speed and transparency—all while integrating with established systems like Visa Direct.

Tanya Kohen, Treasury Masterminds Board Member, comments:

One of the most transformative features of stablecoins for corporate Treasury is their programmability. Unlike traditional bank money, programmable digital cash can be embedded directly into algorithmic workflows allowing Treasury teams to automate how and where cash moves based on predefined rules and real-time data.

This unlocks new levels of efficiency and control: from optimizing working capital in trade transactions, to automating cash management across jurisdictions, to dynamically reallocating liquidity between banks and investment vehicles in line with a company’s investment policy. Crucially, this can all happen without being bound to the limitations of traditional bank products or cut-off times.

In this light, stablecoins aren’t just a workaround for emerging market constraints, but a foundational technology for building smarter, more autonomous treasury infrastructure on a global scale.

What’s equally compelling is how this shift impacts treasury governance. With programmable money, policy enforcement becomes embedded in code. Investment guidelines, counterparty limits, even ESG criteria can be enforced automatically reducing manual oversight and the risk of policy drift. This could ultimately shift treasury’s role from transaction execution to ruleset design and oversight, pushing finance teams to think more like system architects than process managers.

Royston Da Costa, Treasury Masterminds Board Member, comments:

Although I am a big fan of stable coin and digital currencies (not crypto currencies due to their volatility), I also feel it is my duty to flag some issues that Treasurers may not be aware of:

1. Trapped Funds

There are regulatory grey zones and potential legal risks that treasurers face as most emerging markets have explicit capital controls, and moving money abroad—even via stablecoins—may violate local currency and AML laws. Regulators are catching on, and treasurers using this workaround could be exposed to penalties, license risk, or retroactive enforcement.

The benefit of using stable coin to extract cash from restricted markets is still a powerful one, and one can only hope that local regulators try to work with stable coin rather than drive it ‘underground’.

2. Stablecoin FX Exposure Isn’t Risk-Free either

• USDT has faced long-standing transparency issues around reserves.
• Even USDC has experienced depegging events, especially during periods of systemic stress (e.g., March 2023 with Silicon Valley Bank).

If you’re a treasurer trying to manage FX risk, trading local currency volatility for stablecoin counterparty and depeg risk may just shift the problem, not solve it. Having said that, the risk is still limited and manageable.

3. The Myth of “80% Cheaper” Cross-Border Transfers

Claiming 80% fee reduction assumes:

• Users already have crypto-compatible infrastructure.
• There are no conversion slippages or liquidity spreads in on-/off-ramps.
• Local banking partners don’t impose their own fees or delays.

In reality, on-/off-ramping stablecoins often incurs hidden costs, and recipients may need to pay a premium to convert into usable local currency, especially in markets with shallow liquidity. I believe this will reduce in time as it scales up.

4. Operational Simplicity? Or Complexity in Disguise?

Introducing blockchain-based rails means treasury teams now must:

• Maintain wallet security infrastructure.
• Educate themselves on new regulatory regimes.
• Deal with layer-1 blockchain congestion, gas fees, and unexpected bugs or delays.

What’s pitched as “simpler” is actually a new layer of operational and compliance burden. Unless a company is crypto-native, this is a significant cultural and technical leap. Again, this could be a normal part of the Treasury function in the future and no different to perhaps how some Companies are set up to run an intercompany netting system or in-house bank today.

5. Visa’s Involvement Doesn’t Eliminate Risk

Visa’s presence adds an aura of legitimacy, but let’s be clear:

• Visa doesn’t guarantee regulatory acceptance of stablecoin flows.
• Visa is not the issuer or custodian of the stablecoins—it is an integration partner.

There are still positives to be taken from Visa being involved i.e. the size and scale that Visa has to offer, making stable coin a more widely accepted alternative form of payment.

6. Regulatory Risk Is Rising, Not Falling

This area has to be tightly regulated as it evolves, and not surprisingly, the examples below confirm this.

• Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and others are tightening control over digital assets.
• Treasury activity via stablecoins might soon require full licensing, reporting, and capital adequacy compliance.

Today’s “opportunity” may become tomorrow’s legal liability.

Contrarian Bottom Line

The Visa–Yellow Card partnership is not a “pivotal moment” for treasury innovation—it’s an experimental bet wrapped in enterprise clothing. For corporate treasurers under fiduciary and legal duty, stablecoin-based strategies:

• Introduce new counterparty, compliance, and technical risks,
• Mask real costs and friction in blockchain-to-fiat pathways,
• And remain subject to regulatory whiplash.

Rather than embracing this as a saviour for emerging market treasury, a prudent treasurer might ask:

Are we replacing the devil we know with one we don’t understand?

To be clear, I still believe that Digital Currencies like Stable coin are the future, however, I also believe that we should not walk into this blindfolded!

Also Read

• How Executives Are Using AI to Lead Smarter: Key Takeaways from the Huszár Consulting Survey
• Exploring Stablecoin Strategies: Implications for Corporate Treasurers
• Pix Reinvents Recurring Payments — and Corporate Treasurers Take Note
• International Payment Fraud Is Rising — A Wake-Up Call for Corporate Treasurers
• Open Banking: A Missed Opportunity for Corporate Treasurers in the UK and EU?
• The 5 Biggest Challenges Facing Treasury Teams Today: Analyst vs. Manager Perspective
• Nordics and Estonia Develop Offline Card Payment Systems: A Wake-Up Call for Corporate Treasury

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