Yellow Card has appointed seasoned fintech executive Maria Oldham as its new Chief Operating Officer, signaling an aggressive push into the next phase of its global expansion. The company operates as the largest licensed stablecoin-based infrastructure provider across 34 countries, with a strong footprint in Africa and a growing presence in other key markets. Oldham’s arrival is intended to strengthen Yellow Card’s capabilities as it scales cross-border stablecoin payments and money movement across emerging regions.
Company Background and Market Expansion
Yellow Card has built a stablecoin-powered payments and treasury infrastructure that targets businesses moving money across borders in and out of Africa. Its platform focuses on simplifying international transfers, improving transparency, and reducing friction for enterprises that operate in multiple currencies and regulatory environments. The company is now extending this model beyond the continent, with expansion underway into Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Oldham’s Global Fintech Track Record
Oldham brings nearly twenty years of experience across finance, payments, and technology, with leadership roles in several high-growth fintech companies. She has held senior positions at PayPal, dLocal, and Loft, giving her deep exposure to both global-scale platforms and regional growth stories. Her background spans strategic finance, market entry, and operational scaling in complex emerging markets.
Leadership Roles Across High-Growth Platforms
Most recently, Oldham served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Strategy, Corporate Development, and Finance at dLocal, where she helped drive the company’s global growth agenda. Before that, she was Vice President of Marketplace at Brazilian proptech unicorn Loft, overseeing the development and scaling of its marketplace business. Earlier in her career, she led PayPal’s small and medium enterprise business across Latin America and played a central role in building iZettle Brazil, which later achieved a $2 billion acquisition by PayPal.
Responsibilities in Her New Role
As Chief Operating Officer, Oldham will take charge of Yellow Card’s revenue and growth engine, overseeing functions such as Strategy, Operations, Partnerships, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. She will report directly to CEO and co-founder Chris Maurice, aligning execution across teams and geographies. The mandate is to refine the company’s operating model while accelerating customer acquisition and product adoption in current and new markets.
Strategic Vision for Stablecoin Infrastructure
Oldham has framed stablecoins as the next major disruptive wave in payments, following earlier shifts in digital commerce and fintech. She has highlighted Yellow Card’s technology and compliance-led infrastructure as a critical advantage, emphasizing its potential to make cross-border payments more predictable, transparent, and reliable for businesses. In joining the company, she aims to help build what she describes as the next generation of financial rails for enterprises and their customers globally.
CEO Perspective and Leadership Bench Strength
Maurice has pointed to Oldham’s track record of scaling global fintechs and navigating cultural and regulatory complexity across emerging markets as decisive factors in her appointment. He underscored that Yellow Card is entering a phase where disciplined execution, local understanding, and product innovation must move in lockstep. According to Maurice, Oldham’s experience will be central as the company rolls out new offerings that connect global digital assets infrastructure with local financial systems.
Oldham’s appointment also reflects Yellow Card’s broader strategy to assemble a leadership team with both global and emerging markets pedigree. Originally from São Paulo and now based in London, she pairs local emerging market insight with international exposure and academic credentials from EAESP-FGV São Paulo and London Business School. Her arrival marks a reinforcement of Yellow Card’s ambition to modernize financial infrastructure across Africa and other emerging regions through a stablecoin-based platform built for scale and regulatory rigor.