In brief
- Stablecoin fintech Rain has raised $58 million.
- The Visa-backed company, which issues cards, has raised a total of $88.5 million from big backers like Sapphire Ventures, Dragonfly, Galaxy Ventures, and Samsung Next.
- Stablecoins are a hot topic since President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act.
Stablecoin-backed card company Rain, which partnered with Visa this year, has raised $58 million as part of a series B funding round, the company said in an announcement Thursday.
The raise brings the company’s total funding to $88.5 million. Rain, which closed its A round five months ago, said the money would be used to grow the firm’s platform and “give global institutions the most flexible, modular, and compliant stablecoin infrastructure available.”
Venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures led the funding round, with Dragonfly, Galaxy Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Samsung Next, Lightspeed, and Norwest also contributing.
“Stablecoins are shifting to the backbone of global commerce,” Rain CEO and co-founder Farooq Malik said. “In its earliest form, money moved instantly. We’ve spent centuries slowing it down.”
Rain this year partnered with Visa to push ahead with its stablecoin-linked cards.
In the release, Rain said that is intent on making stablecoins “instantly usable anywhere Visa is accepted through its physical and virtual card programs, processing millions of transactions across 150+ countries.”
The company said that it had grown transaction volume by tenfold this year with such portfolio partners as Nuvei, Avalanche, Dakota, and Nomad using Rain infrastructure for merchant payouts, everyday consumer purchases, B2B spend, and cross-border payroll.
Visa has been making major inroads into the crypto space, particularly with stablecoins. In April, it partnered with Bridge, a unit of payment services provider Stripe, to offer stablecoin-linked debit cards in Latin American countries. In 2021, it announced that it supported USDC on Ethereum.
Stablecoins are digital tokens running on blockchains that are pegged to non-volatile assets, usually dollars. With a stable value, such cryptocurrencies were previously used by traders to enter and exit digital asset trades without the need for banks.
But now, banks, major companies, including Meta and Amazon, and even U.S. states are all interested in issuing the tokens, which are supposed to accelerate payments leveraging blockchain technology.
U.S. President Donald Trump in July signed the GENIUS Act into law, establishing a framework for issuing and trading stablecoins in the U.S.
“Stablecoins have scaled to hundreds of billions in circulation, but until now, they couldn’t be easily spent,” said Sapphire Ventures President Jai Das, who will join Rain’s board. “Rain is working to fix that by connecting stablecoins to Visa’s global network, turning them into money you can actually use for everyday commerce.”
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Source: https://decrypt.co/337238/fintech-rain-raises-58-million-to-fuel-stablecoin-push-on-visa-network
