Stablecoin payment volume is now estimated at roughly $390 billion annually, with business-to-business transactions surging nearly 733% year over year, per McKinsey and Artemis. By April 2026, Visa’s stablecoin settlement volume had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, climbing 50% in just one quarter. For entrepreneurs handling cross-border operations, this evolution could alleviate a common frustration: managing multiple providers, currencies, and layers of fees just to send money internationally.
In March, Mastercard revealed its plan to acquire BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure startup, for as much as $1.8 billion. “When the legacy rails start building on the new rails rather than competing with them, the demand debate is over,” Alex Witt, general partner at Verda Ventures, told me via written responses.
Against this backdrop, California-based fintech Flex — sometimes referred to as “Brex for business owners” — has raised $70 million in a Series B1 round led by Halo Fund to build on that concept. Flex Global, its cross-border banking platform powered by stablecoins, provides multi-currency accounts in 32 currencies across 170 countries.
The Middle Market Nobody Banked
“About 350,000 business owners in the U.S. manage 40% of American payroll,” Flex founder and CEO Zaid Rahman said to me in an interview. “About three million business owners manage 50% of the global economy.” Rahman’s argument is that both ends of the business spectrum are well covered — micro-businesses by Square and Toast, large enterprises by Ramp and similar companies — while the middle remains largely unaddressed. Many of these owners work across multiple entities, currencies, and jurisdictions, making cross-border money movement a routine part of their operations.
Flex’s core clientele generates between $3 million and $200 million in yearly revenue, mostly in construction, wholesale, and import-export, yet many manage their back office with more than twenty different tools, and over half send more than $1 million in international wires each month. The solution is a single dashboard for an owner operating simultaneously in Dallas, Mexico City, Dubai, and Warsaw.
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Stablecoins Move Behind The Scenes
Stablecoins are evolving into a backend technology — something the customer never sees, hidden beneath an interface that resembles standard banking. “We don’t really care about any one payment rail,” Rahman said. “Stablecoins are just another payment rail for us. What we care about is user experiences for customers to do business faster, cheaper, better.” His example involves a wholesale electronics exporter shipping $20 million worth of goods to Latin America each week.
Historically, executing that foreign exchange in real time was cumbersome. “Now with stablecoins, you could do that instantly and lock in a moment-in-time price,” he said — a capability that matters far more to the business owner than the underlying technology.
Traditional cross-border payments take one to five business days and cost between 1% and 6% all-in. Stablecoin rails settle in minutes, around the clock, at a fraction of a percent. According to Rahman, Flex’s volume running on stablecoin rails already surpasses $1 billion annually, a rapidly growing portion of Flex’s $10 billion in annualized payment volume.
