Yellow Card Acquires Brazil’s GoMoney to Secure Direct LatAm Foothold
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Yellow Card, the Africa-founded stablecoin payments infrastructure provider, has acquired Brazilian virtual asset service provider GoMoney, giving it direct operations in Latin America’s largest cryptocurrency market for the first time. The deal, completed in October, was announced on Wednesday. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition of GoMoney Sociedade Prestadora de Serviços de Ativos Virtuais Ltda. converts Yellow Card’s Brazilian presence from a purely cross-border proposition into a locally regulated operation. For the company’s business clients, the deal adds local collection and disbursement capabilities in Brazilian reais — including through Pix, the central bank’s instant payment system — with settlement in stablecoins. Those services will be delivered through a locally established entity and integrated with Yellow Card’s existing treasury and liquidity infrastructure across other markets.
GoMoney has filed an application with the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) for authorisation to operate as a virtual asset service provider under Law №14,478/2022 and BCB Resolution №519/2025. That resolution, issued in November 2025, established the authorisation and governance framework for virtual asset service providers, foreign exchange brokers, and securities distributors operating in Brazil’s crypto market. Until full authorisation is granted, GoMoney continues to operate under Brazil’s transitional regime for virtual asset service providers, meaning its application remains subject to the BCB’s review and approval.
The regulatory clarity is significant. Brazil’s virtual assets law, enacted in December 2022, set general guidelines for the sector, but the operational authorisation process only took concrete form with the BCB’s 2025 resolutions. For a foreign-headquartered payments group, obtaining a locally licensed subsidiary is a prerequisite for offering regulated fiat-to-stablecoin services at scale. Chris Maurice, co-founder and chief executive of Yellow Card, framed the deal in those terms: “Building global financial infrastructure requires compliance with local frameworks, local payment rails, and local expertise and relationships to operate effectively”.
Brazil is the largest crypto market in Latin America. According to Chainalysis data covering July 2025 to June 2026, the country recorded $252.5bn in cryptocurrency activity, nearly half of the region’s total. Stablecoin activity in Brazil increased 495% across the 2024–2026 comparison period, driven in part by business use cases such as cross-border transfers and liquidity management. Separate Chainalysis findings cited by CNN Brasil showed that the number of Brazilian wallets holding at least $10,000 in stablecoins grew 347% from July 2024, compared with smaller increases in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.
That growth has been propelled by the same forces that have made stablecoins attractive across emerging markets: a demand for dollar-denominated value in economies with currency volatility, and a business need for faster, cheaper cross-border settlement than traditional correspondent banking offers. In Brazil, stablecoins also account for an estimated 90% of crypto transaction volume, underscoring their centrality to the market’s utility beyond speculation.
GoMoney was founded in São Paulo in 2018 and has spent the past eight years building a virtual asset service business focused on using stablecoins for cross-border payments — a model that parallels Yellow Card’s own trajectory in Africa. The company will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Yellow Card and continue to be led by its founders. Maurício Pires, GoMoney’s founder and chief executive, said the two businesses had independently converged on the same use case. “We have spent the last eight years building a virtual asset service provider business in Brazil focused on using Stablecoins as a means of effecting cross-border payments, similar to what Yellow Card has been doing in Africa and globally over the same period,” he said.
The acquisition follows a period of accelerated expansion for Yellow Card. In August 2026, the company raised $40mn in strategic funding from investors including SC Ventures, the innovation arm of Standard Chartered, and Sony Innovation Fund, alongside Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. That round brought total equity funding above $120mn. Yellow Card has also recently secured regulatory approvals or registrations in Canada, Switzerland, Nigeria, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, and supports more than 50 currencies.
The company’s investor base and regulatory footprint point to a broader ambition: positioning itself as a bridge between traditional financial institutions and stablecoin rails. Yellow Card’s clients include banks, fintechs, and multinational businesses that use its infrastructure to access US dollars, manage treasury, and move money across borders. Brazil adds a critical leg to that network — a market large enough to justify direct local operations rather than a correspondent relationship.
The immediate test is regulatory. GoMoney’s application to the BCB is pending, and full authorisation would give Yellow Card a firm legal basis for its Brazilian operations under the new regime. Until then, the transitional licence allows the business to function, but the timing and conditions of final approval will determine how quickly Yellow Card can scale its Brazilian product set. The company has said it will focus on deepening its presence in strategic markets, expanding product capabilities, and strengthening partnerships to support globally operating businesses. For now, the GoMoney deal converts Brazil from a cross-border corridor into a locally rooted operation — a small but consequential shift in the geography of stablecoin infrastructure.
