FundBank Rebrands as IRACE Digital, Aims at Fiat-Crypto Bridge

FundBank Group, an institutional banking provider for asset managers and funds, has rebranded as IRACE Digital. It also acquired Cayman Islands-based Tenet Bank, the company said in a press release Monday. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Tenet serves entrepreneurs, startups, Web3 developers and institutional clients. The combined entity plans to expand beyond traditional banking into digital asset custody, liquidity management and execution services. IRACE said institutional clients still rely on separate providers for banking, custody, payments and trading, which creates operational complexity.

IRACE is not the only firm betting institutions want fewer providers. In April, SoFi launched Big Business Banking, a platform that lets companies manage fiat banking and crypto-related operations through a single regulated bank. That service signed up CoinDesk's parent company Bullish (BLSH), BitGo (BTGO), Cumberland and Wintermute, among others. The trend points toward combining traditional banking, payments and digital asset services under one roof.

As part of the rebrand, IRACE appointed former Zodia Custody CEO John Cronin as global CEO. Several other former Zodia executives, including Jo Lee, Niamh Byrne and Jennifer Fisher, have also joined in senior leadership roles.

"Institutional clients today are forced to stitch together banking, custody, payments, liquidity and execution across multiple providers, each with its own controls, reporting and operational risk," Cronin said in the release. "IRACE is being built to unify that stack into a single institutional platform – one operating model, one governance framework, one set of controls – supporting fiat, stablecoins, and both traditional and digital assets. That is what institutional scale across these markets actually requires."

IRACE operates regulated banking businesses across the U.S., Europe and the Cayman Islands. The company said it is pursuing additional regulatory approvals related to digital asset services in multiple jurisdictions.

The acquisition comes as crypto-native firms seek regulated banking partners after the collapse of Silvergate and Signature. The integration of Tenet's existing client base – entrepreneurs, Web3 developers, institutional investors – could give IRACE a ready-made revenue stream. The risk lies in execution: stitching together multiple licensing regimes and legacy systems is expensive and time-consuming. Cronin's team will need to show that the unified platform actually delivers lower operational risk than the stitched-together model it replaces.

The next milestone will be securing those additional regulatory approvals and onboarding Tenet's clients onto the IRACE platform smoothly.