Yesterday UK-based payments firm BVNK announced a $50 million Series B funding round led by Haun Ventures, including DRW Venture Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures and existing investors Avenir and Tiger Global. It follows a $40 million Series A in 2022. The company is using stablecoins to optimize business payments.
The funding comes shortly after Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of another B2B stablecoin firm, Bridge.
BVNK says the payments it processes have grown 200% reaching annualized volumes of $10 billion. Some of its clients include payroll processor Deel, and payments firms Rapyd and Trust Payments.
Despite raising the substantial funding in 2022, the company didn’t spend any of the money through to the end of 2023. The company’s 2023 accounts show a loss for the period of just $1.7 million, but after revaluations of digital assets it turned a $2.4 million profit. They also stated that by the end of 2023 the annualized payments volumes reached $4.5 billion.
Some of the funding will be used to expand in the Unites States with the opening of offices in New York and San Francisco, although it doesn’t yet have licenses in those jurisdictions. So far it has registered with FinCEN as a money services business and has money transmitter licenses in six US states. It also has licenses in the UK, multiple European jurisdictions, and elsewhere.
In June the company launched its Layer1 business self custody solution. Subsequently, it hired Johannes Kaske to lead it. Kaske previously was Product Director at Metaco which is now part of Ripple Custody.
“Stablecoins are an infrastructure upgrade for payments, ready to replace legacy systems,” said BVNK CEO and Co-founder Jesse Hemson Struthers.
