Trace Finance raises $32 million series A fund to expand stablecoin infrastructure

Cross-border payments solutions company, Trace Finance, has raised $32 million in a Series A round led by CoinFund to expand its stablecoin settlement infrastructure beyond Brazil into wider Latin American and Asia-Pacific markets. The round involved big players like Coinbase Ventures, Paxos, and Chainlink Labs, and intends to use this investment to better its stablecoin infrastructure in partnership with local banking systems in these regions. Trace Finance operations and funding round details The payments company operates a regulated banking and payment infrastructure that connects local financial systems to stablecoin-based settlement. It handles foreign exchange, compliance, and bank connectivity for institutional clients, all of which include fintechs, exchanges, and global payment providers. Trace Finance has processed more than $10 billion in cumulative cross-border transaction volume, and counts itself as a primary infrastructure provider for four of the largest global payment companies active in Latin America, including dLocal, according to the company announcement. Trace Finance co-founder and CEO Bernardo Brites said the company’s valuation had risen by almost tenfold since a 2022 seed round led by HOF Capital. The series A investment round, led by CoinFund, had Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Crypto, Valor Capital, Paxos, HOF Capital, Chainlink Labs, and SNZ Capital as active institutional participants. The funding round also had individual backers, of which included Circle co-founder Sean Neville, Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Mesh co-founder and CEO Bam Azizi, and Ricardo Villela Marino, partner and vice chairman at Itaú Unibanco, Latin America’s largest bank. Expansion plans at forefront of investment Trace Finance plans to use the funding to deepen its product across FX, bank connectivity, compliance, and stablecoin settlement. Geographically, the company is targeting an expansion across Latin America, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region. The payments company also has new stablecoin products in development that would help to further integrate the local banking systems in Brazil and Latin America with global stablecoin liquidity. Einar Braathen, a partner at funding round lead CoinFund, explained that the investment around was focused on the gap between blockchain settlements and local banking access. “Brazil is one of the largest and most operationally complex payment environments in the world, and Trace has built the regulated infrastructure that global blue-chip businesses are using to scale,” Braathen said in the announcement. Brazil ranks among the top five countries globally for stablecoin infrastructure concentration, according to the Trace Finance statement. The country only recently classified the transfer of digital assets across borders as foreign exchange operations, in a regulatory shift that pushes more volume from institutional transactions toward banking providers and away from non-bank alternatives. Trace built its compliance and banking stack within this complex and unique FX market and environment. “Stablecoins alone do not solve cross-border payments. Stablecoins plus regulated local bank infrastructure does,” CEO Brites said in the company’s press release. Trace’s previous milestone of attaining over $10 billion in volume gives the company a set track record, however, scaling the infrastructure in place across multiple countries with different laws regarding FX and on-chain payments integration with local banking will offer a different challenge from operating in a singular market. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.