Walapay has raised $4.6 million in seed financing to expand its licensing footprint, deepen banking relationships and grow its team as it builds cross-border payments infrastructure across emerging markets.
Generative Ventures led the round, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Polygon, Verda Ventures, NGC Ventures, FGV Capital, AAF, Jsquare, Knollwood, Big Brain Holdings and other investors.
Founded by brothers Tom and Dimitri Borgers, Walapay provides enterprises, fintech companies, payment service providers and financial institutions with a single API for account issuance, collections, foreign exchange and global payouts.
The company currently processes $2.5 billion in annualized total payment volume and serves customers including Kast, Nuvei and Bastion.
Walapay has direct local rail integrations across Latin America, Africa and Asia and operates across more than 180 countries while supporting more than 60 currencies.
The company is building infrastructure designed to reduce the number of banks, payment service providers and intermediaries involved in individual cross-border transactions.
Its platform supports instant settlement into multicurrency accounts, real-time repatriation of funds into emerging markets and the ability to convert idle deposits into yield-generating digital dollar instruments.
Walapay works with banking and digital asset infrastructure providers and supports different custody arrangements based on customers’ regulatory and operational requirements.
The company plans to use the seed financing to bring additional banks and financial institutions onto modern payment rails as it targets a global cross-border payments market it estimates at approximately $190 trillion annually.
KEY QUOTES:
“Payments infrastructure breaks down at the last mile, where money has to land in a local account, in a local currency, through a local bank. Walapay is a rare team building that full stack themselves, owning the licensing and banking relationships instead of renting them, and using whichever rails move money fastest and cheapest. We’re thrilled to back Tom, Dimitri, and the team as they bring more of global payment volume onto rails built for how money can move on modern rails.”
Lex Sokolin, Managing Partner at Generative Ventures
“We’re always looking for teams tackling structural gaps in underserved parts of financial services, and cross-border payments is exactly that; still slow, expensive, and stitched together with rented licenses in most emerging markets. Walapay is one of the rare platforms we’ve seen with real local rail coverage across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and we’ve watched their customers get measurable speed and cost improvements from putting volume through it.”
Vivek Krishnamurthy, Partner at Commerce Ventures
“We believe next-generation payment rails will become first-class financial infrastructure, but the banking system isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s important for us to bring both sides together seamlessly, so businesses can move money globally without having to think about the rails underneath.”
Tom Borgers, Co-Founder and CEO of Walapay
