Coinspeaker
Coinbase Pursues Africa Expansion with Yellow Card Partnership
One of the benefits of cryptocurrency and blockchain being such barrier-breaking concepts is that people from all over the world can gain access to them. As such, projects and companies in the blockchain space often find themselves serving an international audience with all sorts of needs. Now, Coinbase, one of the biggest companies in the blockchain space, has announced a new partnership with Yellow Card, a stablecoin exchange. This partnership is designed to help Coinbase expand into the African market and establish a presence there.
Coinbase’s New Partnership
The partnership was officially announced on January 11, 2024, and in it, Coinbase stressed its desire to serve people in emerging economies. As part of its efforts moving forward, it will be teaming up with Yellow Card to roll out products in 20 different African countries. These countries represent 52% of the African population and through this partnership, will, “gain access to USDC on Base with fast, reliable transactions at fees of less than half the cost of fiat transfers.”
The USDC token will be available for purchase via the Coinbase wallet app from February. These tokens can be gotten cheaper using Base, a layer-2 platform.
On top of this, they will be able to send USDC without any fees on any platform they want simply by using a link. Coinbase has specified that this includes messaging apps like WhatsApp, iMessage, and Telegram, as well as social media sites.
As Coinbase has explained, having these sorts of options for residents of these countries benefits them in several ways. First, many of these countries are experiencing high rates of inflation and depend on remittance. Cryptos, including stablecoins, have been found to hedge against inflation and make the process of remittance easier. Users will also find themselves paying less in terms of remittance fees. As Coinbase has pointed out, fiat transfer fees can get as high as 3% to 6%. Through this partnership with Yellow Card, they will pay a maximum of 2% for each transaction, which will help to save a significant chunk of money.
There is also the commerce angle. Small and medium enterprises are known to provide economic growth and jobs around the world but those in Africa face some very unique challenges. Notably, many find it difficult to access accounts in dollars and euros and this shuts them out of the international market. But with this partnership, they can open these accounts in under a minute.
Many of the countries where these services will be rolled out have already shown healthy rates of crypto adoption so, this sort of initiative should be welcome. Along with this, the continent has a remarkable number of young people, which Coinbase also feels will make this project a success.
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Coinbase Pursues Africa Expansion with Yellow Card Partnership