Tech Labari conducted a Q&A with Gillian Darko, Group Vice President of Strategy at Yellow Card, to discuss a variety of topics related to fintech, especially in relation to Yellow Card.
The interview touched on remittances, FX, regulation, and infrastructure in Africa and beyond.
Tech Labari (TL): Ghana’s remittance costs are usually framed as a consumer affordability problem. Why do you see it instead as a foreign exchange retention issue for the country?
Gillian Darko: Affordability is part of it, but I also look at this from the country’s perspective. When money is earned abroad and sent to Ghana, how much value reaches the recipient, and how much of the underlying FX enters the formal financial system? Fees, FX spreads, and settlement costs all affect that journey.
I discussed this in my Business & Financial Times article, “African banks, stablecoins and the next payments inflection”. African banks should be looking at how to bring stablecoin settlement into their regulated systems, with proper liquidity management and oversight.
From my work with banks and institutions, they are increasingly looking at stablecoin infrastructure to improve treasury management: moving liquidity more efficiently, settling payments faster, and reducing capital tied up across corridors. For Ghana, that has significance beyond the fee paid by an individual sender.
When it comes to the future of digital finance, the emphasis should be on efficient movement and retention of value. Stablecoins can provide a settlement layer; orchestration connects that settlement to banks, FX and local payout systems; and AI can add an intelligence layer for liquidity forecasting, routing and monitoring. That is how I see modern payments infrastructure developing.
Tech Labari (TL): Is there a way to quantify how much FX Ghana is effectively losing each year to inefficient remittance corridors, versus what a lower cost, better retained flow would look like?
Gillian Darko: We can estimate the cost of inefficiency, but we should distinguish that from a loss of national FX reserves. Ghana recorded roughly $5.3 billion in net current transfers in 2025, a broader category than remittances alone. Using that as an illustrative scale, each percentage point of cost is about $53 million.
A reduction from 5% to 2% would therefore represent roughly $159 million in additional value on an equivalent gross flow. That is an illustration, not a measured estimate of FX lost. A proper calculation would require corridor volumes, total fees, FX spreads and where settlement funds are held and converted.
Remit2Invest and payments infrastructure
TL: What does the Remit2Invest agenda actually require of payments infrastructure to move beyond a slogan and become something diaspora capital can act on?
This is where the conversation is now moving into a different dimension, and one that I am very interested in. We need to give the diaspora practical ways to save and invest through the money they already send.
In Ghana, there have been some encouraging changes in the policy conversation. The Ministry of Finance has articulated a direction towards reducing remittance costs and encouraging investment and pensions, alongside work towards diaspora bonds. Its remittance project is set out here:
In today’s financial world, the journey is generally: diaspora → remittance provider → recipient → consumption.
We need infrastructure capable of supporting: diaspora → regulated payment rail → bank or wallet → savings, pensions, government securities, housing or other regulated investments.
At Yellow Card, our work with banks and telcos has focused on embedding these capabilities within institutions people already use. The customer should be able to send money, support family, and choose an investment without navigating several disconnected platforms.
TL: What’s currently missing technically or regulatorily that prevents remittance inflows from converting more directly into investment rather than just consumption?
The payment and investment systems need to connect. A sender should be able to put $500 into a family wallet, $250 into a treasury product, and $250 into a housing investment, with clear pricing and confirmation of where the money has gone.
That also requires coordination between payments, banking, FX, securities and pensions regulation, and virtual asset rules where those rails are used. Customer onboarding, investment eligibility and consumer protection need to work across that journey.
When you think of the future, don’t think about simply rolling out another app. We need to be thinking about the financial infrastructure that allows these services to work together.
TL: Who needs to build or upgrade that infrastructure? Is this a central bank mandate, a private sector opportunity, or does it require both moving together?
It requires both. The relevant regulators need to establish clear rules for settlement, FX, licensing, AML/CFT, and consumer protection.
Banks, telcos, fintechs and investment providers then need to build the connections, provide liquidity and make the products accessible. Progress depends on those efforts moving together.
Correspondent prefunding and transaction messaging
TL: Can you walk through, in practical terms, how prefunding requirements at correspondent banks translate into the fees a sender ultimately pays?
A payment message can travel quickly, but the institution paying the recipient still needs funds available to settle it. That often means keeping money in accounts across different markets and currencies.
If an institution holds $10 million to support payments, that capital has a funding or opportunity cost. Add correspondent charges, FX, compliance and reconciliation, and those costs become part of the price of the service. The sender may see them as an upfront fee, an exchange rate margin, or both.
TL: What would it take, capital wise or regulatory wise, to reduce Ghana’s dependence on prefunded correspondent relationships?
Institutions need reliable access to liquidity closer to the time of payment, supported by faster settlement and better connections between domestic and international systems. That can reduce the capital held across separate accounts.
Stablecoin settlement can support this, provided there is dependable local FX liquidity and a regulated payout route. Funding is still required; the opportunity is to hold and deploy it more efficiently. Clear rules on custody, redemption, FX conversion and settlement responsibilities are of great importance.
Prioritising Asia and Latin America before Africa
TL: This rollout prioritised major receiving markets in Asia and Latin America. What made those corridors more commercially or technically viable to launch first?
The rollout needs to be assessed against its actual launch criteria. Generally, providers start where remittance volumes, regulatory clarity, liquidity and established payout partners give them workable economics. Large, concentrated corridors in Asia and Latin America can offer that combination.
Africa has substantial demand, but serving it requires connections across different currencies, regulatory systems, and local payment networks. That increases the work required to launch each corridor.
TL: What specifically kept African markets, including Ghana, out of the first wave? Was it volume, regulatory complexity, FX liquidity, or something else?
I wouldn’t attribute a specific rollout decision to one factor without the provider’s explanation. The issues we encounter in African markets are usually a combination of licensing, FX liquidity, banking integration, local settlement and commercial scale.
From our work at Yellow Card, banks and telcos are actively exploring treasury, savings and cross border settlement. The interest is there. Launching requires the local partners and regulatory permissions to support a dependable service.
TL: Is African market entry a matter of when, or are there structural barriers that need to be solved before African corridors become commercially attractive in the same way?
I see a strong opportunity, but entry depends on solving practical issues around liquidity, interoperability, and regulatory coordination. African institutions should be involved in building that infrastructure and shaping how it serves their markets.
Mobile money showed what can be achieved when financial services are built around local needs. Cross border settlement offers another opportunity to do that, with banks, fintechs and regulators working together.
Any Closing statement?
For me, the opportunity is to improve how value enters African economies, moves through the financial system, and becomes available for investment.
Cheaper remittances are part of that, alongside better treasury management and stronger connections to savings and investment products.
