Circle appoints former Yellow Card executive to lead Africa operations Circle, the company behind USDC, has appointed Gillian Darko as vice president, head of Africa. She joins from Yellow Card, where she was group vice president of strategy.

At Yellow Card, Darko worked on commercial partnerships and market expansion. The company was among Africa’s early crypto firms to prioritize regulatory engagement, securing Botswana’s first virtual asset service provider license in 2022.

Darko previously led JUMO’s Ghana business and held senior roles at JPMorgan Chase, PwC and Intercontinental Exchange.

Her appointment reflects a maturing stablecoin industry, where regulatory experience, institutional relationships and local market knowledge are becoming increasingly important.

Acquisition will be one way incumbents enter crypto. African builders should plan for it As regulatory clarity improves, incumbents will move into crypto, and some will buy their way in. African founders should position themselves for those exits.

The global market already has examples. We've seen Stripe pay $1.1 billion for Bridge and Mastercard agree to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. Both companies had products that larger companies would rather buy than build. There's also the all-important matter of the expertise that comes with those acquisitions.

Evolution's acquisition by Nuvion offers an early African example. According to Nuvion's Oluwatimilehin Oluwasanmi, it was primarily an acqui-hire. Nuvion wanted his expertise, so it bought his company.

Sui, the layer-one blockchain protocol, is shifting its African strategy from developer acquisition and community growth to payment infrastructure. Months after Sui partnered with one of Africa's pioneer fintechs Paga as its primary blockchain infrastructure provider, the protocol has now been integrated by Daya. Daya will use Sui as settlement infrastructure to support its offerings around cross-border payments, treasury management and low-cost stablecoin transfers. 

Previously, Sui had doubled down on acquiring developers in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya. Its African activities focused mainly on developer events, talent acquisition, training and community growth. Now, in keeping with the broader market direction, the protocol has dived into partnerships that help it provide payment infrastructure for businesses.  

Daya integrated Tempo last month and Aptos in June, adding another chain to its existing rail for moving stablecoins, and it is seeing some traction. In August, its Pro feature for OTC desks, P2P traders and other crypto professionals processed $6.2m, up from $600,000 in March.

Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the U.S., may be preparing to enter Africa. Since June, the company has been advertising for an Africa regional lead for stablecoin solutions, based in South Africa. The role is to sell stablecoin issuance and banking solutions to African banks and enterprises, covering FX settlement, treasury operations and correspondent banking.

This week, a professional who has led growth in Africa at Binance, Bybit, Bitget and Coinbase said on LinkedIn that he had joined Anchorage to scale stablecoin correspondent banking across the continent. The product gives foreign banks a U.S.-regulated account to send and receive dollars as stablecoins, settling in minutes rather than days and without the pre-funded accounts correspondent banking normally requires. He told Mariblock he did not apply for the advertised role and does not know whether it is the same position.

Anchorage has no offices in Africa and has made no announcements.