Unblockpay, a global payments fintech and treasury infrastructure company using stablecoins , announced on Wednesday, March 25, the completion of a seed round in which it raised US$4.5 million (R$23.6 million) and was valued at US$20 million (R$105 million).
The funding round was led by Prelude, a London-based venture capital fund, and included participation from the American asset manager Plug & Pay, the crypto liquidity provider Wintermute, and the Brazilian companies Crescera and Triaxis . Among the angel investors are Fabiano Cruz and Dan Faccio, co-founders of Zoop, acquired by iFood in 2024. Neither of them were part of Unblockpay's cap table .
This funding round complements the $3 million pre-seed raised in 2024 with the American crypto startup accelerator Alliance and will help the company, created by a former partner of Stone and NG.Cash, accelerate operations amidst the increasing regulation of crypto in Brazil.
"We are at a unique moment here in Brazil regarding the topic of stablecoins ," says Lucca Freire, co-founder and CEO of Unblockpay, to NeoFeed .
Unblockpay's plan is to start gaining ground among currency exchange brokers, currency correspondents, and small banks by offering infrastructure for the use of stablecoins in international transactions—a technology that allows transactions to be completed in minutes instead of hours or days.
Part of the resources will be allocated to regulatory compliance, classifying the company as a Virtual Asset Service Provider Company (SPSAV), a category created by the Central Bank (BC) last year to regulate companies that want to operate with virtual assets, similar to what the agency did in 2021 when it created the concept of a payment institution.
Unblockpay had been operating thanks to a grace period granted by the Central Bank to various companies in the crypto universe. With the regulation, the company will need to comply with a series of rules to continue operating, ranging from capital and net worth requirements to proving that it has the capacity to supervise operations to prevent illegal activities.
Another portion of the funding round will be used to expand the team, with hires in regulation, compliance, and sales. The company currently has ten employees, many of whom are former Stone employees brought in by Freire, who became a partner in the payment processing company after the sale, in 2021, of Trampolin, a banking-as-a-service company he co-founded in 2019.
Freire, who also participated in the creation of NG.Cash, founded Unblockpay last year along with Pedro Henrique Campo, who was a software engineer at Trampolin and is currently CTO at Unblockpay; and Fabio Thiele, who worked at the investment bank BNP Paribas and currently holds the position of COO.
The company started with currency exchange and cross-border payments, but the goal is to create a native stablecoin banking infrastructure. "If a bank wants to build a dollar account, it can connect to our infrastructure and open wallets , for example," says Freire.
Operating for over a year, Unblockpay has 40 clients and processed more than R$100 million on its platform in February. The company has direct connections with institutions in 34 countries across the European Union (EU), the United States, England, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia.
Among the first clients is Mercado Bitcoin , whose European operation built a product on top of Unblockpay's infrastructure that allows sending euros to Brazil, with the amounts in reais converted and paid via Pix in less than ten minutes.
The expectation is to reach the end of the year moving at least R$ 1 billion per month and also to start offering services for those who need to send money to and from Asia and the Middle East.
Unblockpay is also connecting to Swift , a global communication network between banks for exchanging financial information and international transfers, opening an indirect connection with institutions in more than 200 countries.
The use of stablecoins for transferring funds is a hot topic in the crypto world, with different types of companies entering the market. In Brazil, the trading volume of Tether, one of the available stablecoins, reached US$1.6 billion in July, more than triple the amount recorded in the same period last year and 2.2 times the volume of Bitcoin traded in the month, according to data from Biscoint.
Ruvo is a startup specializing in international payments and money transfers for individuals and businesses. Earlier this year, it raised US$4.6 million through 1confirmation, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Rebel Fund, and Blast, and support from Y Combinator.
Large institutions, such as Itaú , Nubank , and BTG Pactual , offer this type of asset to their clients, albeit sparingly, due to a lack of regulation.
In the case of Unblockpay, the opportunity lies in being the middleman. With the prospect of new infrastructure providers emerging, the assessment is that the team's experience at Stone in developing systems for digital accounts and Pix makes it a well-prepared player for this market.
“It’s all still very early . There are a lot of adventurers, a lot of people who are in the foreign exchange correspondent market, because this is an evolution and replacement of current payment systems, and they need to catch up. Our thesis is about payment infrastructure, with a technological focus,” says Thiele, COO of Unblockpay.
