A New York startup that processes payments across cryptocurrencies and conventional bank networks has secured $37 million in fresh funding, a signal that investors see growing demand for infrastructure that can move money seamlessly between the old financial system and the new.
HIFI announced Tuesday that Left Lane Capital led the Series A round, with backing from early investor Antler and stablecoin issuer Tether. The company claims it handles more than $7 billion in annualized transaction volume for over 10,000 businesses and 200,000 individuals.
The timing reflects a broader shift. Institutional players—BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq—have started testing tokenized settlement systems in live environments rather than just pilot programs. HIFI participated in DTCC's tokenization pilot this past summer alongside those firms, according to the clearinghouse's announcement. Separately, Tradeweb and trading firm DRW executed live tokenized Treasury repo trades using HIFI's infrastructure on Canton Network, a private blockchain built for institutional finance.
What HIFI offers developers is deceptively straightforward: a single API that routes payments across stablecoins like USDC and traditional bank rails including ACH, wire transfers, real-time payments, FedNow, and SWIFT. Banking services flow through Cross River Bank. In theory, this eliminates the headache of integrating multiple systems—though whether that simplicity holds at scale remains an open question.
"We think of settlement as one problem, not three," CEO Zach Walsh said.
The platform supports push-to-card payouts through Visa Direct and settlement on Canton's institutional network using Circle's USDCx stablecoin. HIFI says its payout coverage spans more than 60 countries. Developers get tools for KYC verification, batch transfers, and what the company calls "orchestration addresses" that automatically convert stablecoins to fiat currency upon receipt. The company has also started enabling what it describes as "agentic commerce"—software that can autonomously hold and move money, a concept that raises as many questions about control and liability as it does about efficiency.
Dapper Labs, the company behind NBA Top Shot, processes over 100,000 transactions through HIFI for marketplaces built on Flow and Polygon blockchains. "We were braced for calamity, and the whole thing was just boringly smooth," Bart Bobnis, a staff backend engineer at Dapper, said in a case study published by HIFI. The company also named Sumitomo for cash management and Arival Bank for stablecoin payments in its own announcements.
HIFI plans to deploy the new capital toward additional regulatory licenses, international expansion, and building out a New York-based team. The product roadmap includes card issuance and deeper capital markets infrastructure focused on custody and control issues. Matthew Miller, managing partner at Left Lane Capital, joins the board.
"HIFI is building an important layer," Miller said, "giving developers the infrastructure to create products that can operate across networks and borders."
The company operates in a market where established players have made aggressive moves. Stripe acquired stablecoin orchestration firm Bridge earlier this year, and Mastercard agreed to buy stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. The total stablecoin supply has grown to approximately $305 billion, with Tether's USDT accounting for roughly $184 billion and Circle's USDC around $75 billion, according to industry data.
Visa has expanded its own stablecoin settlement capabilities and partnered with zerohash to enable stablecoin prefunding for Visa Direct clients. The card network reported moving billions in stablecoins with approximately $7 billion in annualized volume as of earlier this year—a figure that happens to match HIFI's claimed transaction volume, raising questions about how much of the overall market remains fragmented versus consolidated.
Walsh previously worked at Sony and Uber before founding HIFI in 2022 with Mohamed Afifi, who serves as COO. The company lists 68 employees on LinkedIn and holds PCI and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications. Antler, which first backed HIFI in a 2023 seed round, said the startup has surpassed $1 billion in lifetime transaction volume and is pursuing licenses in the UAE and Japan. HIFI declined to disclose its valuation.
The company recently launched push-to-card payouts that reach over 4 billion cards globally and shipped KYC enhancements including liveness checks and expanded compliance workflows. Whether these features will be enough to fend off competition from payment giants with deeper pockets and existing relationships is perhaps the more pressing question facing Walsh and his team.
