The round was co-led by Flourish Ventures and 1kx, with backing from White Star Capital and Fabric Ventures. With this, the company’s total funding now stands at $9.2 million.

Kulipa builds payment infrastructure that allows fintech companies to issue cards funded directly from stablecoin balances. These cards can be used anywhere card networks are accepted, including for everyday purchases and ATM withdrawals.

Stablecoins already handle more than $300 billion in daily settlements, but their use in everyday payments is still limited. The systems that connect blockchain-based transactions to traditional card networks are still fragmented and usually require large upfront capital.

Kulipa says its platform removes some of these limitations. It verifies balances and settles transactions onchain, reducing the need for prefunding.

At the same time, it takes on fraud liability for issued cards, which lowers operational pressure for its partners.

“Stablecoins have proven their value as a settlement layer, but using them in everyday financial products is still early,” said Axel Cateland, Founder and CEO of Kulipa.

“Card issuance is the bridge between onchain balances and real-world payments. We built Kulipa to give regulated fintech platforms the compliant, capital-efficient infrastructure they need to operate at global scale.”

The company operates what it describes as a local-first model, with regulatory coverage across the European Union, Argentina and Nigeria. It is also working on expansion into the United States through BIN sponsorship.

Kulipa launched its infrastructure in February 2025 and since then, it has issued more than 120,000 cards and signed 20 customers. These include Flutterwave, Solflare, nSave and Ready.

The company also reports a 70% month-on-month increase in transaction volume.

“At Flutterwave, we’re focused on building payment infrastructure that works across markets at scale. As stablecoins become a more practical settlement option, it’s important that businesses can turn those balances into real-world spending,” said Olugbenga Agboola, Founder & CEO of Flutterwave.

“Partnering with Kulipa allows us to extend stablecoin value into globally accepted payments in a compliant, scalable way.”

“Kulipa has enabled Ready to become an onchain alternative to banks,” said Itamar Lesuisse, CEO of Ready. “With their infrastructure, we can issue globally accepted cards directly from stablecoin balances, giving our users seamless access to everyday spending in a compliant and scalable way.”

Kulipa was founded in 2023 by a team with experience across payments, compliance and technology. Cateland previously worked on Apple Pay and Google Pay deployments at Mastercard.

Co-founder and CTO Michael Shynar has worked at WhatsApp and Google, while Head of Compliance Benoit Roger brings experience from Binance and Nickel Bank.

Investors say the company is addressing a key gap in the market.

“We’re seeing stablecoins moving beyond cross-border settlement and becoming part of real financial infrastructure,” said Ameya Upadhyay, General Partner, Flourish Ventures.

“The missing piece has been compliant, scalable card issuance. Kulipa fills that gap by combining capital efficiency with multi-region regulatory coverage, enabling fintech platforms to bring stablecoin settlement into everyday payments.”

1kx Founding Partner Christopher Heymann added, “Stablecoins are reshaping how money moves globally, but for mainstream adoption, people need to spend them as easily as they spend fiat. 

“Kulipa meets users where they already are, starting with the card in their wallet, and gives businesses a turnkey way to offer that experience. We believe this payments layer is critical infrastructure for the next phase of crypto adoption.”

Kulipa says it will use the new funding to strengthen its infrastructure and support more fintech platforms looking to offer stablecoin-based payments at scale.

Without them, no data could be securely transferred from place to place at the incredible speed required to support the tech industry’s biggest products.

Today, the existing security protocols are struggling to protect users from even bigger threats, specifically the threats posed by large companies, cyber attackers, and AI that manipulate our online experience and erode trust. Blockchain technologies, like smart contracts, are a real hope to restore trust in the internet. 

However, smart contracts can only use a small amount of computing, putting limits on what they can support. To build great user experiences on a trustworthy Decentralized Web, we need a way to verify computations outside of blockchains and make unstoppable applications that, once released, cannot be tampered with.

Recently founded startup Layer aims to extend the functionality of Ethereum by making the first developer tools that support full-stack decentralized applications with Web Assembly.

The company has raised a $6M seed round led by 1kx, with participation from Fabric Ventures, Arrington Capital, Stake Capital Group, and IOBC. Notable angels include Sreeram Kannan of EigenLayer, Rok Kopp and Mike Silagadze of Ether.fi, and Paul Taylor, formerly of BlackRock.

Typically, smart contracts are small programs, specially packaged to be run by trustworthy “validators” on the blockchain. However, to power major software products, like web platforms, smartphone apps, and AI models, smart contracts would need to run thousands of lines of software at speeds you would find on a personal device or data centre server. 

While many teams are optimizing the performance of blockchains like Ethereum, smart contracts alone are not capable of meeting the high computational demand of many applications.

Layer utilizes Web Assembly, which allows developers to write applications in languages like Rust, that can run anywhere – even on your iPhone.

Layer’s upcoming product, the “Layer SDK”, will allow developers to build new layers on top of Ethereum that run full-stack blockchain-based applications consisting of smart contracts, consensus mechanisms, UI, and verifiable off-chain services (AI agents, ZK provers, serverless functions, decentralized messaging servers, and more).

This means, for the first time, a software developer can launch sovereign, incorruptible versions of their software products without any sacrifice to the user experience. 

The founders, Sam Cassatt, Jake Hartnell, and Ethan Frey are three of the most seasoned builders in the blockchain space. Their combined experience has been instrumental in the proliferation of blockchain technologies like MetaMask wallets, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and cross-chain protocols.

By making the decision to band together, the founding team hopes to use all the lessons they have learned in blockchain to fulfil one of its biggest promises – to make all experiences on the internet inherently trustworthy, from the UI down to the functionality, through the shared security mechanisms of smart contracts.

“All three of us have realized that, while smart contracts have given us a foundational layer of trust, they aren’t enough to support a full decentralized version of the Internet,” Sam Cassatt, co-founder of Layer explains. 

“We wanted to complete the full narrative arc of decentralized architecture, and give the world the tools necessary to build any application, with any performance requirements in this trust-minimized way.”

They predict this original ideal, espoused by blockchain’s true believers, will soon be seen as an essential solution to existential threats in our digital world. According to Sam, Jake, and Ethan, the only way to verify the software and data you interact with online has not been manipulated by its creator, its host, a cybercriminal, an AI model, the government, or any other powerful actor would be with a protocol that guarantees trust.

“We are thrilled to back Jake, Sam, and Ethan on their mission to build out the next generation of blockchain infrastructure.” says Wei Dai, Research Partner at 1kx, “Traditional smart contract platforms rely on replicated execution which limits scalability. Layer’s platform and SDK offer the best-in-class scalability, programmability, and configurability for shared-security applications.”

Richard Muirhead, Managing Partner, Fabric Ventures commented: “We at Fabric have long been excited to back teams expanding the boundaries of what is possible in crypto and Lay3r are doing exactly that. By defining a new category of shared economic security that spans hybrid off-chain and on-chain worlds, we believe Lay3r can be a Schelling point for new teams looking to build applications taking advantage of these core primitives.” 

The team believes tools like Layer SDK will be the key to mitigating these incredible threats, and making the Decentralized Web the dominant web, complete with all the exciting products the founders have helped to pioneer in blockchain over the last 14 years.