UAE’s first bitcoin startup YellowPay closes its doors

Announcements | May 30, 2016 By:

YellowPay has ceased its operations for undisclosed reasons according to members of its founding team.

YellowPay was founded in 2014 by David El Achkar, a former Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company, and James Piechota, a Software Engineer at California-based payment technology firm Payjoy. In July of 2015, YellowPay also received an undisclosed amount of seed capital from Digital Currency Group.

Despite this traction, other sources suggested the startup faced issues with its business model, including a decision to continue to emphasize the benefits of digital currency for online payments, a business strategy that has fallen out of favor with the industry and investors.

The news comes amid the Dubai government showing increasing interest in blockchain technology and digital currencies. Keynote Events 2016 recently announced its first blockchain technology conference to be held at Burj Al Arab in Dubai on May 30, 2016. The conference will see a number of investors and government officials from the region and will focus on the blockchain, Bitcoin, investing, regulations, startups, the Internet of Things, growth hacking, and more.