Yellow Card looks quite different from the company that launched in Nigeria in 2019.
It started by making it easier for consumers in African markets to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Seven years later, the company is positioning itself as financial infrastructure for businesses moving money across borders, expanding beyond Africa and bringing in executives with experience building some of Europe’s largest financial companies.
Its latest hire offers another indication of where it is heading.
Yellow Card has appointed Ross Everett, previously group financial controller at UK digital bank Monzo, as its group chief financial officer. Everett has also held roles at Deutsche Bank, Barclays and KPMG.
On its own, hiring a new CFO would be a fairly routine corporate development. Seen alongside the changes Yellow Card has made over the past year, however, the appointment forms part of a much broader transition.
From crypto app to financial infrastructure
In July, Yellow Card announced it would close its retail mobile app and focus exclusively on business customers.
The decision marked a significant departure from the model on which the company initially built its name across Africa. Its business now centres on stablecoin payments, treasury and cross-border infrastructure for companies and financial institutions.
Yellow Card says its network has processed more than $10 billion and supports more than 50 currencies. Its customers include Visa and Western Union, while it has worked with companies including Mastercard.
That shift also changes what the company needs internally.
Serving consumers through a crypto app is a different proposition from providing financial infrastructure to large businesses across multiple regulated markets. Treasury, capital management, reporting and governance become increasingly important as transaction volumes and the number of jurisdictions grow.
Those are areas Everett will oversee at Yellow Card.
“Having spent a significant part of my career building the financial discipline behind hypergrowth, my focus now is building the same foundations at Yellow Card, so the company can scale globally without losing that rigor,” Everett said when his appointment was announced.
The expansion is already underway
Yellow Card’s ambitions are no longer confined to Africa.
In August, the company raised $40 million from investors including SC Ventures, the venture arm of Standard Chartered, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. The investment took its total equity funding above $120 million.
The company said the money would support expansion into Latin America and Asia-Pacific, alongside the growth of its Global USD Accounts product.
It has also entered Canada through Alkepay, its wholly owned subsidiary. Alkepay is registered with Canada’s FINTRAC as a money services business and with the Bank of Canada as a payment service provider.
That gives Yellow Card a foothold in North America while its broader infrastructure business continues to grow.
The company says it now holds licences, registrations or other regulatory authorisations across 22 jurisdictions.
Why the Monzo experience matters
Monzo offers an interesting reference point for the kind of company Yellow Card is trying to become.
The British digital bank grew from a startup challenging traditional banks into a large regulated financial institution serving millions of customers. That expansion required building the financial controls, governance and reporting expected of a business operating at significantly greater scale.
Everett joins Yellow Card with experience of that transition, alongside earlier roles within established institutions including Barclays and Deutsche Bank.
His appointment does not tell us where Yellow Card will expand next or how successful its international push will be. It does, however, offer another indication of the infrastructure the company believes it needs for its next stage.
For Yellow Card, the bigger transformation is already visible.
The company that started by helping people in Nigeria buy cryptocurrency is increasingly trying to sit behind the businesses and financial institutions moving money between markets. Its products have changed, its customers have changed and its geographic ambitions are expanding.
The people it is hiring are beginning to reflect that too.
