Fintechs are increasingly adopting stablecoins—a non-volatile type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the US dollar. When it comes to payments and money transfers, stablecoins offer clear advantages but developing the infrastructure to support them can be slow and costly. This is where Levl wants to fill the gap. The startup aims to build a platform where digital wallets and other fintechs can seamlessly send money around the world using stablecoins.
Levl announced on Wednesday that it raised $7 million in a seed round led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Protagonist, Deus X, Blockchain Builders Fund, among other investors. Jaisel Sandhu, the founder and CEO of Levl, declined to disclose the company’s valuation in an interview with Fortune.
“Instead of the fintech rebuilding their internal plumbing, we can abstract away all the complexity of trying to bridge traditional payments systems with digitals assets,” Sandhu said. “They can get all of the efficiencies of stablecoins without having to deal with building all of that infrastructure in-house.”
Levl’s clients are digital wallets, neobanks, and other fintechs. These companies typically use Levl as the infrastructure platform for their remittances or business to business payments. Two of its clients are TerraPay, a business to business payments provider, and Taptap Send, an international payments company. Levl says that it currently has more than 20 clients.
The startup views its competition primarily as large banks, where remittances and business to business payments have traditionally taken place. Sandhu says that with Levl’s platform, money can be moved instantly and at lower rates than through these legacy systems. He says that there are other stablecoin providers that are more regionally focused but less global in scale than Levl.
“We’re one of the few stablecoin native providers that can do a payment in Mexico and the Philippines via the same API that you can plug into in a couple of days,” he said.
Like many other founders in the crypto startup space, Sandhu began his career in the world of traditional finance. He worked for several years at AQR, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, where he traded equities and foreign exchange. There, he noticed that exchange rates he would see on his Bloomberg terminal were different from those he would see on a consumer app on his phone. That ended up being the inspiration for Levl, which he believes could level the playing field for remittances for consumers and businesses.
The platform launched in August and has an annualized transaction volume of over $1 billion. Sandhu said that the startup generates revenue through transaction fees but did not disclose specific numbers.
With the new capital, Levl plans on doubling its headcount from 18 employees to about 36. It also plans on expanding its services in Latin America and Africa.
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