The company’s Series A round, announced Wednesday (May 28), included participation from the venture investment arm of Circle, issuer of the USDC stablecoin. Conduit said the funding will help it expand into new markets.
“This fresh capital injection will enable us to accelerate our mission to build the next generation global payments infrastructure, to promote fairer economic opportunities across the world,” Kirill Gertman, Conduit’s CEO, said in a news release.
“Traditional cross-border payment systems do not meet the demands of modern businesses” Gertman added. “Conduit’s platform seamlessly bridges the gap between traditional banking and stablecoin technology, offering unparalleled speed, affordability, transparency and reliability.”
According to the release, Conduit’s cross-border payment network integrates stablecoins, USD and local currencies, providing businesses what the company says is a faster, cheaper and more reliable alternative to the legacy SWIFT system.
Already connected to multiple local banks in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, Conduit will use the funding to enter new markets and support a wider range of traditional and digital currencies through its real-time payment rails.
In other stablecoin news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about Circle’s plans to go public, noting that the company is “betting that the credibility conferred by becoming a public company will help the company in a financial environment skeptical of opaque crypto firms.”
Transparency, that report said, is a major pillar of Circle’s pitch to institutional clients as outlined in its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By going public, Circle will open itself up to the scrutiny of U.S. securities laws, quarterly earnings reports and regulatory disclosures, all designed to foster trust from risk-averse enterprises, banks and governments.
“The stablecoin arena is no longer the wild frontier it once was,” that report said. “Circle must now contend with legacy finance and FinTech upstarts. PayPal launched PYUSD, and traditional banking consortia are mulling their own. Tether remains the volume leader globally, especially outside the United States.”
Circle’s advantage rests with its U.S.-compliant stance and focus on transparency and fiat backing. Whether that will be enough to ward off better-capitalized or more broadly distributed competitors remains to be seen.
“The potential IPO valuation and capital war chest may help, but only if Circle is able to move quickly to entrench itself as the preferred partner for enterprises,” PYMNTS wrote.
