Yellow Card, a pan-African stablecoin infrastructure company that raised $33 million in October, has secured a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) licence in South Africa, a significant step in its regional expansion. This comes as South Africa continues to relax its regulatory stance on cryptocurrency in 2024, with over 138 companies now licensed to operate within the country’s regulated crypto ecosystem.

“The CASP license … reflects our dedication to providing secure, compliant, and transformative solutions for our customers both in South Africa and across Africa,” Chris Maurice, Yellow Card’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. 

Yellow Card, which entered South Africa in 2020, operates in 20 African countries, allowing users to use stablecoins to send money across these countries. The startup claims to have facilitated over $3 billion in transactions since its inception in 2016. 

South African regulators began licensing providers of advisory services, exchanges, payment gateways, and wallets to bring oversight to the country’s growing crypto industry as the industry processed $26 billion in transactions between June 2023 and June 2024.

This regulatory framework has enabled the South African government to tax crypto returns and reduce risks related to money laundering and terrorist financing. 

However, the FSCA’s authority is limited to licensing and overseeing Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASPs) for financial services involving crypto assets and does not equate to recognising crypto assets as legal tender or as “cryptocurrency.” The South African Reserve Bank also does not currently recognize crypto assets as currency.

The earliest step in liberalising South Africa’s crypto regulatory landscape came in November 2018 when the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), in collaboration with the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), South African Revenue Services (SARS), and the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), established the Crypto Assets Regulatory Working Group. 

In October 2022, the FSCA declared crypto assets as financial products, bringing them under its regulatory jurisdiction. This move paved the way for the FSCA to open applications for licenses in June 2023 and began the welcoming of crypto in South Africa.