CoinFund and Coinbase Back Fund Tracking Stablecoin Payments by Raising $32 Million

Trace Finance, a financial infrastructure company that connects banks in Brazil and the United States to stablecoin settlement networks, He said Wednesday It has raised $32 million in a Series A funding round led by CoinFund, with support from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Capital, and several other cryptocurrency-focused investors.

The increase comes as Brazilian regulators reclassify cross-border cryptocurrency transfers as foreign exchange operations, a shift that is pushing institutional money away from unregulated cryptocurrency platforms and toward licensed, bank-level intermediaries — and around which specialist Trace has built its business.

The New York-based company says it has processed more than $10 billion in cross-border transaction volume and has become the primary settlement partner for several major global payments companies operating in Latin America, including Uruguay-based payments company dLocal.

Bernardo Brits, co-founder and CEO of Trace, said the company’s strategy is based on linking stablecoins to traditional banking compliance rather than treating digital currency as an alternative to regulated railways.

“Stablecoins alone do not solve the problem of cross-border payments,” Brits said in a statement. “Stablecoins plus the infrastructure of regulated local banks do.” “This round allows us to deepen the banking, payments and compliance infrastructure that global fintech companies, exchanges, international banks and corporates rely on to connect digital settlement with trusted local financial systems.”

He said the new funding will help the company expand beyond its initial US-Brazil corridor into other Latin American markets, as well as the US and the Asia-Pacific region.

The round also attracted participation from strategic investors including Chainlink Labs and individual backers with deep ties to the cryptocurrency industry, including Circle co-founder Sean Neville and Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, as well as Ricardo Vilela Marino, Vice Chairman of Itaú Unibanco, the largest bank in Latin America.

“The next phase of global money movement will be won by companies that can bridge on-chain settlement with trusted local banking systems,” Einar Brathen, partner at CoinFund, said in a statement. “Brazil is one of the largest and most operationally complex payment environments in the world, and Trace has built the regulated infrastructure that major global companies use to scale, while saving time and costs compared to legacy alternatives.”

Trace’s previous funding round, a 2022 seed raise, was led by HOF Capital. The company said it is now developing additional settlement products aimed at deepening its banking relationships throughout Brazil and the wider region.