Chris Maurice (Yellow Card) on Stablecoin Adoption in Africa (EP.641)
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Hello, and welcome back to On the Brink. This is Nick Carter. Today, I'm sitting down with Chris Maurice, the founder of Yellowcard, Africa's premier crypto exchange and stablecoin payments company active in a number of countries across Africa. Chris rejoins the podcast after four years to talk about how his business has evolved and how African businesses are interacting with stablecoins in the real world. We're really glad to have Chris back at this fascinating time when stablecoins are inflecting, especially in emerging markets. He always has a great perspective. Let's dive right in. Chris M
good to be here. You know, I mean, unfortunately, nothing's really changed since 2021. So I I mean, it's probably gonna be the same show.
Yeah. So if I recall correctly, you've been in crypto for well over a decade now. How does now in 2025 feel in terms of excitement, like, maturity, traction? How does it feel to you after ten years more than ten years of doing this? Yeah,
man. I mean, so I I got into the space back in, back in 2013. Right? And I think, you know, it has, I mean, it's it's been through every cycle. I mean, as you know. Right? You've been you've been in a similar amount of time. Right? So, I mean, you know, we've been through every cycle, every, you know, up and down roller coaster and all of that. And, you know, I think, 2015 or 2025, sorry, feels special. And, you know, I know look. I think a lot of people say this every time that, you know, the industry is doing well and trending. But, you know, the reason that I'm excited about it is I feel li
in since you last did our show in the last four years, how has Yellowcard's product and business itself changed? Yeah.
I mean, we've we've also come a very long way in a, you know, a short amount of time. Right? So, I mean, I think, you know, look. When we were talking back in 2021, we were still pretty much fully focused on retail. Right? When we started out, we were doing, you know, retail exchange, and we were focused on how do you, you know, essentially take the Coinbase model, right, and and, you know, replicate that into markets that, that don't have access to, you know, to Coinbase and to to platforms like that. And, you know, now, we are, I mean, you know, fully focused on businesses. Right? And we're
It's so interesting because this is literally the number one question we get about stablecoins is who are the real world individuals or firms that are using them? Is it just for crypto speculation, or is there a real economic use case? And I feel like you are on the front lines of this. So can you maybe just, like, give us a bit of color on, like, what's the alternative? Like, your clients, the businesses that use yellow card, what would they be doing otherwise? And how is it better now that they have stable coins?
Yeah. So that's I mean, look. That's a great question, and I think, you know, that's always again, that's always like you said, that's always the pushback that you hear in the space is, you know, what are the actual practical applications of this stuff. Right? What are the actual use cases of this stuff? And I think that, you know, with Stablecoins, you know, what it's doing in practice is it's replacing the way that people interact with the US dollar. It's completely changing the way that people interact with the US dollar. So, you know, the businesses that we work with across emerging market
I do actually have an uncle in The UK, believe it or not. But I I don't think he's engaging in in Hoala. I so I guess, across, like, Africa, I mean, people treat as a monolith, which obvi
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