TBD, an enterprise from the Block focused on decentralized open source technologies, today presented a technical preview of tbDEX: an open source liquidity and trust protocol to unlock frictionless trade and financial access worldwide.
At its core, the tbDEX protocol facilitates the formation of mutual trust between counterparties in an open and permissionless network. It also allows counterparties to negotiate claims to enable compliant transactions. Yellow Card becomes the first Participating Financial Institution (PFI) on tbDEX to offer liquidity in 20 African countries.
“tbDEX bridges the gap between old and new – enabling anyone to benefit from decentralized payment systems and digital assets, with easy ramps in and out of legacy payment systems and fiat currencies,” says Emily Chiu, COO of TBD. “For developers, adopting the tbDEX protocol unlocks global liquidity for their customers while avoiding the complexity associated with custom API integrations with each provider.”
We are reimagining a new world of payments and commerce
Globally, 1.7 billion adults are unbanked, yet two-thirds of them have a mobile phone that could help them access financial services. The internet and wireless technology have given us the information infrastructure we need to serve everyone, but money and payments have not kept pace.
An open, decentralized financial system will allow people and institutions to exchange value and trade with each other globally, and at significantly lower cost and more inclusively than traditional financial systems allow. tbDEX was created as an open source, license-free protocol out of a desire to allow everyone to participate in this vision of the future.
“The core of tbDEX’s innovation is the creation of a trust protocol for the exchange of value. This is useful for bitcoin, stablecoins, digital assets and traditional fiat – creating a standardized way to create trusted financial and commercial transactions on the internet through a native internet financial protocol,” says Mike Brock, CEO of TBD. “The absence of trust in payments means you will have more fraud, incorrect payments and higher financial losses. This raises the cost of financial transactions for everyone.”
tbDEX Protocol: A New Level of Trust and Identity for Digital Payments
The tbDEX protocol creates a bridge, based on open standards, that connects the world of legacy money with digital money and assets, without the need for central intermediaries or governance tokens. True to open source practices, tbDEX is a protocol that is available to everyone, but owned by no one.
The protocol allows participants to securely validate counterparty identity and trust, as well as desired compliance with relevant laws and regulations. Once trust is established, tbDEX’s standard messaging protocol allows Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs) and counterparties to discover, negotiate and confirm transactions using a supply and demand system. Once the transaction details are confirmed, participants execute and settle these transactions outside the protocol.
Verifiable Credentials (VC) are core to building trust and compliance in the tbDEX protocol. VCs are an open standard established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that enables easy sharing of digital claims in a secure, waterproof and independently verifiable manner using globally recognized standards. VCs provide a standard way of expressing physical credentials across the digital world in a manner that is cryptographically secure, privacy-respecting, and machine-verifiable. These credentials can be proof of ID, proof of driver’s license, or any other type of credential, securely attached to an ID that you own and can safely prove is yours.
TBD is pioneering the use of VCs to comply with anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CTF) and sanctions regulations to ensure that networks based on the tbDEX protocol are that regulators and regulated financial institutions can trust.
Building a truly open ecosystem
The tbDEX protocol allows any organization that shares the vision of a decentralized and open global payment system to create new services and benefit from an ever-growing network of participants. The results of the network are enhanced with each additional participant. The participants who will bring it to life include;
Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs) are entities that provide liquidity. PFIs can be, but are not limited to, fintech companies, regional or large institutional banks and other financial institutions. PFIs have access to payment systems and the ability to facilitate exchanges of fiat for digital assets (or vice versa). Any PFI can run a node on the network without third party approval from any individual, federation or organisation. At scale, a competitive PFI network brings more liquidity and competition, resulting in lower fees and faster transaction times.
Wallets and Apps. Wallets or apps facilitate exchanges with PFI. Wallets and non-financial applications can also search for liquidity on the tbDEX network. Wallet and app developers may design features and functionality tailored to the desired user experience. For example, a wallet could algorithmically select PFI based on speed, cost, or history — or delegate that selection to the wallet owner.
Verifiable Credential (VC) Issuers. Economic use cases on tbDEX will be unlocked through a network of trusted identity issuers and verifiers. Examples could be valid issuers such as a government agency issuing a physical identity document as a VC. Digital Identity Verification (IDV) providers worldwide can play a key role in verifying the information on which VCs rely. Therefore, a financial institution can issue a VC based on its existing identity verification and KYC onboarding process. It is up to the verifiers to decide whether to trust the VC based on their regulatory obligations and the level of certainty they have in the issuer.
All potential participants who would like to learn more about tbDEX can download the white paper and connect with the TBD team by emailing
Yellow Card Becomes First PFI on tbDEX, Unlocks Off-Ramps in 20 African Countries While the tbDEX protocol can facilitate many use cases, cross-border payments and commerce are among the first to be explored by TBD. Earlier this year, Yellow Card created a tbDEX app that facilitated the exchange of bitcoins into Kenyan shillings deposited into an M-PESA account in real time. This used the tbDEX protocol to negotiate the terms of the asset exchange using tbDEX messages. and determine compliance using VC sanctions to meet Yellow Card legal and regulatory obligations.
Today, Yellow Card establishes the first PFI in the network. The Yellow Card offers no-ramps on both bank and mobile accounts, as well as liquidity in 20 African countries, including Botswana, Cameroon, DR Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Togo, Mali, Republic of Benin and Burkina Faso.
Interested developers can take advantage of Yellow Card’s PFI offerings by engaging with the tbDEX protocol through TBD’s open source software developer kits (SDKs).
“It is a real honor to be selected by TBD as the first PFI for tbDEX. These partnerships, especially of this caliber, serve as an exciting testament to the dedication and hard work of the Yellow Card team – particularly the compliance, fund and trade teams—but also in our collective vision with TBD to reshape the cross-border payments landscape across Africa and the world,” said Chris Maurice, CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card.
TbDEX SDK for Typescript and Kotlin / Java now available. Additional Platforms Coming in 2024 Today, TBD released the first set of tbDEX SDKs in Typescript and Kotlin / Java. These SDKs make it easy for participants to create and manage their IDs, issue and accept VCs, negotiate offers and requests, and participate in the protocol.
These SDKs offer a range of features and include:
tbDEX SDK: used by participants to construct, verify and validate tbDEX messages
DID SDK: used to create and resolve identifiers (DIDs) representing institutions and participants
Credentials SDK: used to generate and verify the verifiable credentials (VC) sent back to requesters and to create data structures required for VC exchange
Crypto SDK: contains the cryptographic foundation required for DID, VC and tbDEX messages
SDK Encoders: contains the encoding and decoding utilities required for DID, VC, and tbDEX.
In 2024 TBD plans to release additional SDKs on platforms including SWIFT and Android. To learn more and start developing with tbDEX SDK, visit developer.tbd.website.
About TBD
As one of four businesses on the Block (fka Square), TBD is focused on creating a decentralized future that returns ownership and control of your finances, data and identity. Driven by this vision, TBD is building an open source developer platform and infrastructure that enables everyone to access and participate in the global economy.
About the yellow card
Yellow Card is the largest and only licensed Stablecoin on/off ramp on the African continent. Operating in 20 countries, we provide individuals and businesses of all sizes across Africa with secure, liquid and affordable access to USDT, USDC, PYUSD and BTC via their local fiat directly and through our payments API.
Founded in 2016 by Chris Maurice (CEO) and Justin Poiroux (CTO), Yellow Card launched in Nigeria in 2019 and has since rapidly grown into one of the fastest growing fintechs in Africa, with a presence in 20 countries and over 1, 7 million retail customers.
In 2023, Yellow Card was awarded the prestigious ‘Disrupter of the Year’ award at the Africa Financial Industry Summit (AFIS). The award recognizes companies that have demonstrated resilience in challenging times and whose innovation represents market disruption.