Trace Finance Raises $32M to Expand Stablecoin Rail Beyond Brazil

Trace Finance, a Brazilian cross-border payments firm built on stablecoin settlement, closed a $32 million Series A led by CoinFund. The round included Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Crypto, Valor Capital, Paxos, HOF Capital, Chainlink Labs, and SNZ Capital, alongside individual backers like Circle co-founder Sean Neville and Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.

The company operates regulated banking and payment infrastructure that connects local financial systems to stablecoin-based settlement. Trace handles foreign exchange, compliance, and bank connectivity for institutional clients such as fintechs, exchanges, and global payment providers. It has processed more than $10 billion in cumulative cross-border transaction volume and counts itself as a primary infrastructure provider for four of the largest global payment companies active in Latin America, according to the company announcement.

Co-founder and CEO Bernardo Brites said the company’s valuation had risen by almost tenfold since a 2022 seed round led by HOF Capital. The funding will deepen Trace’s product across FX, bank connectivity, compliance, and stablecoin settlement. Geographically, the company targets expansion across Latin America, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region.

The Regulatory Tailwind

Brazil ranks among the top five countries globally for stablecoin infrastructure concentration, per Trace’s statement. The country only recently classified the transfer of digital assets across borders as foreign exchange operations. That regulatory shift pushes more institutional transaction volume toward banking providers and away from non-bank alternatives. Trace built its compliance and banking stack inside that FX environment.

“Stablecoins alone do not solve cross-border payments. Stablecoins plus regulated local bank infrastructure does,” Brites said in the release.

Einar Braathen, a partner at lead investor CoinFund, described the investment thesis as focused on the gap between blockchain settlements and local banking access. “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,” Braathen said.

The Scaling Question

Trace’s $10 billion-plus cumulative volume gives it a track record in a single market. Scaling that infrastructure across multiple countries – each with different laws regarding FX, on-chain payments integration, and local banking – is a different challenge from operating in one jurisdiction. The company has new stablecoin products in development to further integrate local banking systems in Brazil and Latin America with global stablecoin liquidity.

The $300 billion stablecoin supply milestone (see: Stablecoin Supply Tops $300B) underscores the demand for settlement rails that touch local bank accounts. Trace’s bet is that regulated middleware, not just on-chain liquidity, is what institutional clients need to move cross-border volume.