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Yellow Card automates KYC in 16 countries while meeting all compliance requirements

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YellowCard at a glance

Industry

Crypto

Goal

Automate user verification across many markets.

Countries of Operation

Botswana, Cameroon, Malawi, Rwanda, and 12 more

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Impact

16
Countries Covered
300M+
Users Digitally Verified

How Yellow Card partnered with Smile ID to stay KYC compliant across Africa.

About Yellow Card

Yellow Card is a Pan-African crypto exchange whose mission is to offer customers across Africa the safest way to buy, sell and trade digital currency. Over the last four years, their growth has been fueled by the increasing demand for digital tokens to fulfill various use cases, such as saving stable coins, income generation from trading, and a medium for payment have been a source of substantial growth in the adoption of cryptocurrency.


Since being founded in 2019, Yellow has worked to make digital currencies such as Bitcoin and USDT available to anyone in Africa.

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Challenges with Regulations

The goal of opening up cryptocurrency access across Africa has not come without its challenges. The lack of a consistent regulatory framework for cryptocurrency from country to country can complicate the process of scaling.

For this reason, Yellow Card has always maintained regulatory compliance practices to the highest level of global standards. They comply with all international AML frameworks, FATF travel rules, and KYC requirements across all jurisdictions.

Another demonstration of Yellow Card setting the bar for crypto company compliance is their license in Botswana. On September 29th, 2022 Yellow Card became the first crypto company to be granted a Virtual Asset Service Provider license to operate in Botswana.

Over the last year, Botswana has taken significant steps to regulate digital tokens, with the Virtual Asset Act of 2022 becoming the standard for crypto operations in the country. As a licensed provider, Yellow Card will be able to safely offer its crypto solutions to help cater to the underbanked population of Botswana.

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Partnering with Smile Identity

As we’ve seen with their strict compliance practices and pioneering license in Botswana, Yellow Card has always taken regulatory compliance extremely seriously and Smile ID has worked with the Yellow Card team to ensure they meet those high standards.

Smile ID partners with Yellow Card in 16 markets to conduct digital KYC using a combination of Document Verification, Government database searches, and biometric face matching. Since partnering with Smile ID, Yellow Card has digitally verified over 220 000 users, a process they previously conducted manually.

We are proud to work with the Yellow Card team to improve accessibility and provide the high-standard KYC solutions they need to offer a safe crypto environment across the continent.

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Working with Smile has improved our KYC in key markets but also as we expand across Africa. Working with the team to solve problems customers are dealing with from a mobile device that can’t take a picture clearly to how quick we can get this information stored and vetted has been an interesting journey with Smile. It’s been quite amazing to work with the team.

Mandy NaidooChief Compliance Officer, Yellow Card
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