Jack Dorsey's Square, Coinbase Ventures Join $15M Funding Round In African Bitcoin Exchange

Jack Dorsey’s Square Inc SQ participated with Coinbase Global Inc.’s COIN financing arm, Coinbase Ventures, in Africa’s largest Bitcoin BTC/USD related investment.

What Happened: Yellow Card, a Pan-African crypto exchange, has raised $15 million in Series A Funding, as per a report from Forbes.

The round was led by Valar Ventures, Third Prime and Castle Island Ventures with participation from Square, Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain.com Ventures.

Square’s investment in the firm is unsurprising given that its founder Jack Dorsey has been a long-term advocate for Bitcoin, which can be seen in tweet back in 2019.

Sad to be leaving the continent…for now. Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!). Not sure where yet, but I’ll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020. Grateful I was able to experience a small part. 🌍 pic.twitter.com/9VqgbhCXWd

— jack� (@jack) November 27, 2019

Yellow Card was established in June 2019 after its founders sought to bring crypto to people that don’t have access to financial systems.

The exchange’s co-founder Chris Maurice recalled being driven to create a solution for the African market after meeting a Nigerian man in the U.S. who was charged $90 by Wells Fargo & Co WFC to send $200 to Nigeria.

“The big picture is to change the way that money moves around the continent using crypto, and we want to make it easier for people to be able to just jump from their local economy into the economy of the internet and vice versa,” said Maurice.

“Our overall user growth has been 30X since the start of the pandemic, and Uganda is currently our fastest-growing market,” he added.

The firm plans to use its newly raised $15 million to grow its team, expand to new countries and launch new products.

Price Action: Square shares are down 0.27% at $242.04 and Bitcoin is trading at $42,211, up 2.83% on Wednesday morning.

Photo: Jürg Kradolfer on Unsplash