YellowCard goes Swiss

Good morning ☀️

Road to Moonshot is making a stop in Kenya on the 2nd of July. If you're in Nairobi and building something in tech, we'd like to meet you. Reach out to Adonijah and Kenn. See you there.

—Zia

Yellow Card, the stablecoin infrastructure company, has secured regulatory approval to operate through a supervised Swiss entity to allow financial institutions to move money into Africa and other emerging markets using stablecoins.

The idea is simple: Instead of a bank in Europe trying to figure out how to move money across dozens of African markets, it can now work with a regulated Yellow Card entity in Switzerland that connects it to those markets.

Why is this important to Yellow Card? In October 2025, the company told customers it was shutting down its retail trading business to focus on helping businesses move money across borders, settle payments, and manage treasury operations using stablecoins. By establishing a regulated presence in Switzerland, Yellow Card is positioning itself closer to the financial institutions that could become its biggest customers.

Yellow Card didn't go for the Swiss cuisine: The company's choice of Lugano is no accident. The Swiss city has spent the last few years turning itself into a destination for blockchain and digital asset companies. Through initiatives such as Plan ₿, a partnership with Tether, Lugano has explored blockchain-based public finance projects and positioned itself as a place where traditional finance and digital assets can meet.

The big picture: Yellow Card already operates across more than 50 emerging markets and counts companies like Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, Thunes, and MoneyGram among its partners. Its Swiss move signals an ambition to become the bridge between institutions looking for a regulated way into emerging markets and the businesses on the ground that need faster ways to move money.

Namibia'sCommunications Regulatory Authority (CRAN) dismissed Starlink's appeal against its March licence rejection on Monday, confirming that Elon Musk's satellite internet company still does not meet Namibia's local ownership requirements and has now exhausted its immediate legal options in the country.

What happened? CRANoriginally rejected Starlink's applications for a telecoms service licence and radio spectrum access in March, citing non-compliance withsection 46 of Namibia's Communications Act, the provision requiring local ownership and control of licenced operators. The rejection followed a public assessment against six criteria, including competition, national security, and compliance history. Starlink failed on ownership.

Who’s benefiting? Namibians in rural and underserved areas who want affordable satellite internet and are watching their government block it on ownership technicalities. There’s a demand for Starlink; the CRAN received 624 public submissions asking the authority to reconsider. 

And that’s the last of it, for now. Next door in South Africa,Starlink's path is equally blocked; the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) said in May it cannot implement the minister's direction without amending the Electronic Communications Act, a process that could take years. Two countries, same wall. Until Starlink restructures its local ownership or finds a compliant partner, southern Africa stays off the map.

Kenya's National Assembly hasapproved the National Cybersecurity Agency (NCSA) Order, 2026, clearing the way for a standalone agency to coordinate the country's cybersecurity response. The government has allocatedKES 4 billion ($31 million) for setup and operations.

What’s the 411? Right now, Kenya's cybersecurity functions are split across multiple institutions: theCommunications Authority (CA) of Kenya, the National KE-CIRT/CC, the Kenya Defence Forces, and the National Intelligence Service. Each is handling a piece of the problem without a single body coordinating the whole picture. Think of it like having five fire stations that don't talk to each other and can't agree on who responds to which fire. The NCSA is supposed to be the central command that fixes that.

Why now? Between January and March 2026, Kenya's existing systemsdetected 3.37 billion cyber threat events and issued over 20 million advisories. Those aren't abstract statistics; they represent attacks on the mobile money platforms, e-government systems, hospitals, and telecoms infrastructure that millions of Kenyans use every day.

It’s a good year for cybersecurity: Mozambique is also fast-tracking its own national cyber strategy with Finnish support. African governments built digital infrastructure for a decade without building the defences to protect it. The reckoning is arriving, and Kenya just blinked first.

Rebrands are usually an excuse for companies to unveil a new product, but Credable's rebrand is slightly more interesting than that. The fintech has officially changed its name to _able (yes, four letters lighter).

What does this company do? Imagine a telecom company or fintech wants to launch a loan product. They could spend years building the technology and risk systems needed to figure out who gets a loan, how much they get, and whether they'll pay it back, or they could call _able. 

You might have used them without knowing: The company provides infrastructure that sits behind digital lending and savings products across Africa. It works with organisations including M-PESA, Airtel, Access Bank, and Diamond Trust Bank, helping power financial products used by more than 40 million customers.

So why the name change? According to them, it has outgrown its original job description. When Credable launched in 2021, it was focused on helping financial institutions determine who was creditworthy enough to receive loans. Today, it supports savings products and provides the infrastructure needed to run financial services. The name Credable was probably too tied to credit. 

Other than removing four letters, why should you care? Not every fintech wants to be the star consumer-facing app. Sometimes the fulfilment is in being the technology that hundreds of financial institutions rely on behind the scenes. That's the business _able is chasing. Which means there's a chance you'll never use an _able product directly, but a loan or savings account you use one day might be running on its technology.