Trace Finance, the regulated financial infrastructure company powering cross-border payments and stablecoin settlement, has closed a $32 million Series A led by CoinFund, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Crypto, Valor Capital, Paxos and HOF Capital. Strategic backers include Chainlink Labs, SNZ Capital, Sean Neville (co-founder of Circle), Anatoly Yakovenko (co-founder of Solana Labs) and Ricardo Villela Marino, partner and vice chairman of Itaú Unibanco, Latin America’s largest bank.
The raise was announced on 17 June 2026.
The infrastructure thesis
Trace is not a stablecoin issuer. It is the regulated plumbing layer between onchain settlement and local banking systems in markets where compliance requirements are highest. The company’s initial proving ground was the US–Brazil corridor. Brazil has classified virtual-asset cross-border flows as foreign exchange operations, effectively requiring institutional volume to move through bank-grade infrastructure rather than unlicensed rails. Trace built to that standard and has processed more than $10 billion in institutional cross-border volume, making it the main infrastructure provider for the top four global payment companies operating in LatAm, including dLocal.
The Series A will be used to extend that stack internationally: deeper product capabilities across FX, bank connectivity, compliance and stablecoin settlement, and an expanded regulated footprint across Brazil, the US, APAC and additional priority jurisdictions.
CEO Bernardo Brites was direct about the model: “Stablecoins alone do not solve cross-border payments. Stablecoins plus regulated local bank infrastructure does.”
Why brokers and their PSPs should pay attention
Several of the frictions that Trace solves are the same ones broker operators experience in LatAm and APAC corridors. Settlement in high-compliance jurisdictions tends to be slow, expensive and operationally intensive. PSPs serving the high-risk merchant segment – including online trading businesses – typically rely on a patchwork of local partners for Pix connectivity, FX conversion and compliance operations. Trace bundles all three under a single regulated infrastructure layer and targets the largest payment companies as customers, meaning the layer can appear underneath a broker’s existing PSP relationship rather than requiring a direct integration.
The dLocal connection is material. dLocal is an established payment route for brokers operating in emerging markets; Trace being the infrastructure provider for dLocal and equivalent platforms represents a significant position in the payment chain that broker deposits and withdrawals may already pass through.
Einar Braathen, Partner at CoinFund, framed the investment in settlement-efficiency terms: “Brazil is one of the largest and most operationally complex payment environments in the world, and Trace has built the regulated infrastructure that global blue-chip businesses are using to scale, while saving time and costs compared to legacy alternatives.”
The GENIUS Act, which passed in the US in July 2025 and established a federal regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers, has accelerated institutional capital into the compliant layer of the stablecoin stack. Trace’s funding follows State Street’s Rule 2a-7 stablecoin reserves money market fund (launched 16 June) and Fidelity’s equivalent (15 June) – three separate institutional moves in the same week pointing at the same structural shift: regulated stablecoin infrastructure is being capitalised at scale.
What to watch
- Trace’s APAC timeline: the company has named APAC as a priority corridor alongside LatAm and the US. For brokers with significant client bases in South-East Asia, where stablecoin adoption among retail traders is high and local banking connectivity is complex, the launch timing matters.
- Paxos participation: Paxos, a regulated stablecoin issuer and payments infrastructure provider, backs the round. Any product integration between Paxos stablecoin rails and Trace’s banking network would broaden the settlement options available to broker payment partners.
- Regulatory treatment of stablecoin-converted deposits: MiCA is live in the EU, the GENIUS Act in the US. How each jurisdiction classifies a stablecoin-funded client account remains a live compliance question for brokers expanding their payment optionality.
