FX payments startup OpenFX raises $94 million amid cross-border stablecoin push

OpenFX, a foreign-exchange market making and remittances startup, has raised $94 million in a funding round led by a group of venture investors including Accel, Atomico, Lightspeed Faction, M13, Northzone and Pantera, the company and Reuters reported. The raise, which values OpenFX at about $500 million according to a person familiar with the matter, will support the firm's push to use stablecoins to speed cross-border payments and to expand into Southeast Asia and Latin America.

"You can easily do transfers for anywhere between $1,000 and $100,000 - but the minute you tried to do anything between $1 million and $10 million clip sizes, you eat through the order book," said OpenFX founder Prabhakar Reddy in an interview. "There are very few people in the world who are actually willing to pay 2% to 5% to move USD to euro - so that's when I realized that the infrastructure was broken."

Details of the raise and product approach

The $94 million round follows a $23 million raise last year and comes as market infrastructure firms increasingly explore blockchain-based currencies to provide faster and cheaper transactions for large-value movements. OpenFX, founded by Reddy in 2024 after observing long queues at Western Union branches in Dubai, links traditional banking systems with digital rails and uses stablecoins as a bridge for near-instant foreign exchange conversion.

• Investors named in the round: Accel, Atomico, Lightspeed Faction, M13, Northzone and Pantera.
• Operating footprint: United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and India.
• Recent fundraising: $23 million raised in 2025.

OpenFX reported rapid volume growth: the company said it helps process over $45 billion in annualized payment volume, up from $4 billion a year earlier. The startup said more than 98% of transactions on its platforms settle in under 60 minutes, compared with two to five business days in the legacy forex market.

Customer base and market positioning

OpenFX has pitched its services to fintech companies, neobanks, remittance providers and payroll platforms that require large and reliable liquidity rails. Reddy, whose prior ventures include the crypto prime brokerage FalconX, framed OpenFX as infrastructure that addresses pronounced market frictions in moving sizeable sums between currencies and jurisdictions.

Atomico founder and CEO Niklas Zennström emphasized the platform analogy in his backing: "Just as AWS removed the complexity of infrastructure to let developers build at scale, OpenFX is doing the same for money movement. Their global liquidity rails, paired with always-on, real-time settlement, unlock a step change in cross-border financial infrastructure."

Outlook

The fresh capital will fund geographic expansion into Southeast Asia and Latin America, regions where the company said stablecoin adoption is rising quickly. With an investor syndicate that includes major venture firms and a valuation near $500 million, OpenFX aims to scale its real-time settlement model and challenge legacy correspondent banking timelines for cross-border FX. Reporting on the raise was led by Reuters reporters Anirban Sen in New York and Manya Saini in Bengaluru.