Yellow Card’s $40M Round Brings In Standard Chartered and Sony, a First for the Stablecoin Firm

Yellow Card announced a $40 million strategic funding round on August 4, pushing its total capital raised above $120 million. The round brings SC Ventures, the venture arm of Standard Chartered, and Sony Innovation Fund onto the company’s cap table for the first time, alongside returning investors Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital.

The Backers Behind This Round vs. Every Round Before It

This strategic investment also stands out among recent Web3 fundraising updates. Every disclosed investor across Yellow Card’s Seed, Series A, Series B, and Series C rounds, five years and roughly $89.5 million, came from crypto-native venture: Polychain, a16z crypto, Celo Foundation, Castle Island Ventures, Valar Ventures, Third Prime, Blockchain Capital, Galaxy, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures. This round is the first to include a bank’s corporate venture arm and a consumer-electronics conglomerate’s investment fund.

Five Rounds, $120M+, and Where the Money’s Going

RoundDateAmountInvestor baseSeedAug 2020$1.5MCrypto-nativeSeries ASep 2021$15MCrypto-nativeSeries BSep 2022$40MCrypto-nativeSeries COct 2024$33MCrypto-nativeStrategicAug 2026$40MCrypto-native + bank/consumer-tech VC The new money is earmarked for scaling Global USD Accounts, Yellow Card’s product letting businesses hold dollars, swap stablecoins, manage treasury, and move local currency across more than 50 countries on domestic rails, and for deepening reach in Latin America and Asia-Pacific specifically. Visa and Western Union are named as existing users of that product.

Manson, Noronha, and Maurice: Infrastructure Talk, Different Angles

SC Ventures CEO Alex Manson frames the investment as backing infrastructure with “real-world utility” for African markets specifically. Sony Ventures-US managing director Austin Noronha’s statement is more revealing about incentive than intent: he describes Yellow Card’s stack, APIs, local fiat rails, institutional-grade security, regulatory-first posture, as what makes stablecoin payments “practical for banks, fintechs, and enterprises,” and names LatAm, EMEA, and APAC expansion explicitly rather than just Africa. Read together, both statements describe Yellow Card less as a crypto payments company and more as regulated financial plumbing, which is consistent with who’s now funding it.

CEO Chris Maurice’s calls the actual opportunity “connecting banks themselves to stablecoin rails,” not just serving businesses that need dollar access. That’s a claim about where Yellow Card wants to go, not evidence it’s already there, worth separating from the money that just arrived to fund the attempt.

We just raised $40M in strategic funding from @scventuresDNA, @Sony_Innov_Fund, @polychaincap, @bcap, and others.

Total financing is now $120M+, and it’s going toward growing Global USD Accounts and our stablecoin rails across LatAm and APAC.

Read More: https://t.co/aBOQwt0wgBpic.twitter.com/TI3tdQNsqM

— Yellow Card (@yellowcard_app) August 4, 2026

What This Round Actually Needs to Prove

The money changes what Yellow Card can build. Whether it changes who Yellow Card answers to is the more interesting open question. A bank’s venture arm and a conglomerate’s investment fund bring a different investment approach and risk tolerance than the crypto funds that backed every round before this one. If Standard Chartered or Sony’s involvement produces an actual bank integration with Yellow Card’s rails, the “banks plugging into stablecoin infrastructure” framing Maurice used holds up.