Walapay Raises $4.6M Seed Round to Expand Cross-Border Payment Rails

Walapay has raised $4.6 million in seed funding to expand the regulated and banking infrastructure behind its cross-border payments platform.

Generative Ventures led the round. Participants included Commerce Ventures, Polygon, Verda Ventures, NGC Ventures, FGV Capital, AAF, Jsquare, Knollwood, and Big Brain Holdings.

Founded by brothers Tom and Dimitri Borgers, Walapay provides a single application programming interface for issuing multicurrency accounts, collecting funds, converting currencies, and making payouts. Its customers include enterprises, fintech companies, payment service providers, and financial institutions.

Funding Meets Operating Scale

Walapay says it is processing $2.5 billion in annualized total payment volume and serves customers including Kast, Nuvei, and Bastion. Its website lists coverage across more than 180 countries and over 60 currencies, spanning fiat and stablecoin transactions.

The company plans to use the seed capital to obtain additional licenses, deepen its banking relationships, and expand its team. Those investments are central to its strategy: rather than relying entirely on aggregators to complete the final leg of a transaction, Walapay is building direct connections to local payment rails across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

That approach targets one of the hardest parts of international money movement. As Securities.io recently explained in its overview of why cross-border payments remain difficult, a transfer can involve multiple currencies, institutions, compliance regimes, and operating calendars before the recipient’s account is credited.

Walapay says an international payment may pass through four or five banks and payment providers before settlement. Each additional intermediary can introduce cost, delay, and another potential point of failure. Bringing account issuance, foreign exchange, compliance, and local payout connectivity into one platform could shorten that chain for customers, although doing so also places considerable weight on Walapay’s licensing, liquidity, and banking operations.

Combining Bank and Stablecoin Rails

Walapay is not positioning stablecoins as a wholesale replacement for the banking system. Instead, its model connects conventional accounts and local banking networks with digital-asset rails, allowing customers to select the route that best fits a transaction.

The company’s developer documentation describes support for virtual multicurrency accounts, fiat-to-fiat transfers, conversions between fiat and stablecoins, and stablecoin-to-stablecoin payments. Its infrastructure also incorporates customer onboarding and transaction compliance.

For fintechs and payment providers, the attraction is less about adding cryptocurrency as a standalone product and more about using stablecoins as a settlement and liquidity tool. Walapay says its platform can provide instant settlement into multicurrency accounts, repatriate funds to emerging markets, and support different custody arrangements according to a customer’s regulatory and operational requirements.

“We believe next-generation payment rails will become first-class financial infrastructure, but the banking system isn’t going away anytime soon,” Walapay co-founder and CEO Tom Borgers said.

The round’s investor mix reflects that hybrid strategy. Commerce Ventures focuses on financial-services and payments technology, while Polygon and several of the participating funds bring experience in blockchain infrastructure and digital assets. Lead investor Generative Ventures backs businesses operating at the intersection of fintech, decentralized networks, and machine intelligence.

What Comes Next

The financing gives Walapay more resources to build the regulatory and institutional relationships that software alone cannot replace. The central test will be whether the company can turn its broad geographic coverage into consistently reliable payment corridors while maintaining compliance across very different markets.

Investors and customers will also need to watch settlement performance, the depth of local banking integrations, custody arrangements, and how quickly new licenses translate into usable products. The company’s reported payment volume demonstrates meaningful early traction, but the complexity of maintaining infrastructure across many jurisdictions remains substantial.

Walapay’s seed round illustrates where competition in cross-border fintech is moving. The visible product may be a simple API, but the differentiating work increasingly sits underneath it—in licenses, banking relationships, liquidity, compliance, and direct access to local payment systems.