Cyclops announced it has raised $8 million in a strategic investment round backed by Castle Island Ventures, F-Prime, and Shift4 Payments. The funding will support the development of a stablecoin and crypto infrastructure platform built specifically for the payments industry.
Founded by repeat entrepreneurs Pat Duffy, Alex Wilson, and David Johnson, Cyclops aims to simplify how payment service providers (PSPs) integrate digital asset capabilities. The platform enables PSPs to offer stablecoin settlement, crypto payments, and other digital asset services to merchants through a single integrated partner rather than relying on multiple vendors.
The founders previously created The Giving Block, a crypto donations platform for nonprofits that was later acquired by Shift4. Following that acquisition, the team spent several years developing crypto and stablecoin products within Shift4’s ecosystem. Their experience building these tools within a large payments company exposed the operational and technical challenges that PSPs face when launching digital asset services.
Cyclops was created to address those pain points by providing payment companies with ready-to-deploy crypto and stablecoin functionality without requiring them to build or maintain blockchain infrastructure internally. The platform offers low-code and no-code tools designed to streamline onboarding, compliance, and technical integration for payment providers.
By consolidating capabilities such as crypto acceptance, stablecoin settlement, and stablecoin payouts into a single platform, Cyclops aims to eliminate the complexity that has slowed broader adoption of digital assets in the payments sector. The company believes that focusing exclusively on the payments industry allows it to tailor its products and infrastructure to both traditional and emerging payment use cases.
The company also noted that evolving regulatory clarity around stablecoins, including frameworks such as MiCA and GENIUS, has created new opportunities for payments companies to incorporate digital assets into their services. Stablecoins can enable faster money movement, improved margins, and stronger merchant relationships for payment providers.
Cyclops said the platform is now commercially available to payments companies seeking to introduce crypto and stablecoin offerings.
KEY QUOTES:
“Using a patchwork of existing solutions, we built products for pay-with-crypto, stablecoin settlement and stablecoin payouts at Shift4. It was so much harder than it needed to be. We shouldn’t have needed multiple vendors and dedicated engineering and product teams to bring those products to market. Cyclops is the first platform where everything comes out of the box ready for a payments company.”
Alex Wilson, Co-Founder of Cyclops
“Payments companies see the potential for crypto and stablecoin products. Merchants are asking for them. But they’ve been prohibitively difficult and expensive to bring to market. We like Cyclops because we don’t think a payments company should need to become a crypto company just to offer these products to their customers.”
Luke Thomas, Chief Strategy Officer at Shift4
“The Cyclops team spent years building stablecoins and crypto products inside of a large company. Their products are unique because they had to do it the hard way. No one knows the pain points better than they do.”
Sean Judge, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures
