BVNK Lands Citi Investment as Stablecoin Adoption Grows
Citi Ventures says it has invested in stablecoin infrastructure platform BVNK.
The investment, announced in a Thursday (Oct. 9) news release, follows other recent deals between BVNK and backers such as Visa, Haun Ventures, Tiger Global amid an ongoing shift to digital asset-based infrastructure.
“Stablecoins are seeing increased interest in use for settlement of on-chain and crypto asset transactions,” said Arvind Purushotham, head of Citi Ventures. “We were impressed by BVNK’s enterprise-grade infrastructure, and their proven track record.”
According to the release, BVNK’s platform processes more than $20 billion per year for enterprises and payment service providers, and acts as the stablecoin infrastructure provider for companies that include Worldpay, Flywire and dLocal.
“This investment reinforces our mission to accelerate the global movement of money,” BVNK Co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers said in the release. “Our platform enables companies to harness stablecoins to move money quickly across borders and launch innovative financial products with enterprise-ready security and compliance.”
The release also notes that Citi’s investment comes amid increasing regulatory clarity around stablecoins, including the recent GENIUS Act in the U.S.
As covered here last week, the stablecoin market has grown 42% this year and now exceeds $300 billion in value. PYMNTS reported that this growth has been fueled by efforts to extend the use of stablecoins “beyond being simply crypto’s payment plumbing and toward becoming a building block for next-generation payments, treasuries and capital markets.”
PYMNTS wrote recently about stablecoins in cross-border payments as a way to upgrade what has long been a cumbersome method.
“A payment may travel through multiple correspondent banks, each charging fees, performing compliance holds and holding prefunded balances in various jurisdictions,” that report said. “This leads to multiday settlement, foreign exchange slippage, float costs, limited transparency and reconciliation burden.”
Stablecoins on blockchain rails aim to solve these frictions. Because stablecoins tend to be pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, there is much less volatility.
“Settlement can become atomic and near instant. Token transfer and transaction metadata move together,” PYMNTS wrote. “Liquidity can be supplied just in time, so capital isn’t locked across multiple nostro accounts. Programmable rules can embed reconciliation, enforce compliance or trigger conditional transfers.”
Stablecoins are becoming part of the connective settlement layer of B2B cross-border flows, helping CFOs more efficiently manage liquidity. When Coinbase reported quarterly earnings results this summer, CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong said cross-border stablecoin payments are likely a $40 trillion opportunity, with the B2B market making up 75% of that.
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