There's a particular kind of bureaucratic hell reserved for founders operating outside the United States who need to move dollars around. You can't open a US bank account without a US entity. But incorporating in Delaware when you're building from, say, Estonia or Dubai often feels like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame—expensive, time-consuming, and not quite the right tool for the job.
HEVN, a San Francisco fintech that emerged from Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch, believes it has found an answer. The company was publicly introduced in early May with what amounts to a simple promise: corporate cards, USD accounts, and multi-region banking—all without the Delaware incorporation paperwork.
Think Brex or Ramp, the founders suggest, but for companies that happen to be registered in Tallinn, São Paulo, or anywhere else that isn't the United States.
It's an appealing pitch in an increasingly global startup ecosystem. Whether HEVN can actually deliver on it is a more complicated question.
What Works Right Now
At its core, HEVN offers virtual corporate cards with half-a-percent cashback and what the company markets as "0% FX fees." That second claim deserves a raised eyebrow—more on that in a moment.
The cards themselves come with the usual controls: spending limits, unlimited team issuance, transaction categorization. Standard fintech fare, competently executed by all appearances.
More interesting is the banking infrastructure. HEVN provides named local accounts across three regions: Lithuania for SEPA transfers within Europe, US accounts that handle ACH and domestic wires, and AED accounts in the UAE tapped into the local UAEFTS network. According to the company, accounts open in a day or two, with the know-your-business verification wrapping up in less than a week for most applicants.
Then there's the crypto layer. HEVN supports stablecoin rails—USDC and USDT specifically—for what it positions as near-instant, round-the-clock cross-border settlement. The company emphasizes a non-custodial wallet setup, meaning users theoretically maintain control of their own keys. It's a telling architectural choice, one that makes more sense when you look at where the founding team came from.
A Background in Blockchain
The four co-founders—Peter Volnov (CEO), Nikita Briuzgin (CPO), Pavel Mitsevich (CMO), and Andrei Zhevlakov (CTO)—previously built HOT Labs and HERE Wallet, both crypto-focused products on the NEAR protocol. Volnov has noted in LinkedIn posts that their prior venture reached significant scale before the team moved on: millions of active users, substantial transaction volume, considerable assets under management.
That crypto pedigree shapes HEVN's approach. Rather than constructing a traditional multi-currency account from scratch, they're essentially layering fiat banking onto stablecoin infrastructure. Whether that's brilliant or overly complex depends largely on execution.
The Fee Question Nobody's Quite Answering
Here's where things get murky. HEVN prominently claims "0% FX fees" in its Y Combinator launch materials and on certain country-specific landing pages. The UAE site, for instance, explicitly promises "0% for USD<>AED" conversions.
But what does that actually mean? Zero markup above the spot rate? No transaction fees? Something else?
As of mid-May 2026, the company hasn't published a comprehensive global fee schedule, which makes independent verification difficult. For context, established players are far more transparent about their economics. Wise Business publishes fees that typically fall between 0.36% and 0.81% depending on the currency pair. Airwallex charges 0.5% to 1% above interbank rates. Revolut offers tiered FX allowances, then applies a 0.6% markup beyond those limits.
HEVN's opacity here is notable, particularly for a company positioning itself as a challenger to those incumbents. Perhaps the fee structure is still being finalized. Or perhaps "0% FX" has asterisks the size of small countries attached to it.
Either way, it's the kind of claim that warrants skepticism until the full pricing details emerge.
Betting Big on the UAE
One market where HEVN has clearly invested significant attention: the United Arab Emirates. The company has developed a dedicated offering for UAE free-zone companies, complete with a standalone website listing eligible zones—DMCC, IFZA, ADGM, DIFC, Meydan, RAKEZ, DSO, and DIC among them.
Setup costs 360 AED (roughly $98), with a monthly subscription of 40 AED (about $11). The site promises onboarding in under seven business days, a timeline that would be impressive if consistently achieved given the compliance requirements involved.
The company also mentions pilot programs in Hong Kong and Singapore in its launch materials, though general availability timelines for those markets remain unclear.
The FDIC Promise That Isn't Quite Here Yet
Perhaps the most ambitious piece of HEVN's pitch remains firmly in the "coming soon" category: FDIC-insured USD storage without a US employer identification number.
The company's terms of service—last updated in late February—indicate that accounts may be conditionally eligible for FDIC pass-through insurance through partner banks, subject to standard limits and conditions. But that without-EIN option? Not currently available.
This detail matters because it gets at something fundamental about HEVN's structure. The company is "not a bank," as its legal disclosures carefully emphasize. Banking and card services flow through unnamed regulated third-party partners. HEVN hasn't publicly disclosed which institutions provide its EU, US, and UAE banking infrastructure—a level of opacity that may give some prospective customers pause.
A Crowded, Complicated Market
HEVN is entering a field that's grown remarkably dense over the past few years. Brex, Ramp, and Mercury own the US startup banking space, but they all require a US legal entity and EIN by design—they're optimized for the American venture ecosystem, full stop.
On the international side, Wise Business, Airwallex, Revolut Business, and Jeeves all court global companies with varying degrees of success. Each takes a different approach to foreign exchange, compliance, and regional coverage. The market has room for multiple winners, but differentiation has become increasingly difficult.
For founders exhausted by the patchwork of cobbling together Mercury for US payments, Wise for currency conversion, and local banks for everything else, an integrated platform holds obvious appeal. Whether HEVN can deliver on its fee structure claims while navigating multi-jurisdictional compliance across the EU, US, and UAE—each with its own regulatory idiosyncrasies—will determine if it becomes the "Brex for non-US companies" it's positioning itself to be.
Or if it becomes another well-intentioned fintech that discovered cross-border banking is harder than it looks.
