Anna Kucera/Anna Kucera
The payments world is changing fast, and a swath of start-ups are leading the charge to transform how banks do business in up-and-coming areas such as stablecoins and artificial intelligence.
Crunchbase tracks more than 8,600 fintech start-ups and nearly 2,400 payments start-ups in various stages of development that have collectively raised about $257 billion and $96 billion respectively. The start-up space is particularly important for banks, not only for the services they provide, but also as these companies mature, they often become acquisition targets. Case in point is Stripe’s recent acquisition of stablecoin payments platform Bridge.
What follows is a sampling of five earlier-stage start-ups that analysts, venture capitalists and other industry professionals say banks should keep a close eye on in 2025.
Fueling the fraud fight
Company: Darwinium
Founders: Alisdair Faulkner, Ananth Gundabattula, Ben Davey, Caleb Moore and Colin Goldie.
HQ: San Francisco, with operations in Australia and the U.K.
Website:
Year founded: March 2021
Use case for banks: Darwinium is a fraud prevention platform that integrates automated fraud detection with traditional fraud prevention capabilities. The platform provides full visibility and control of every digital interaction with the bank, across the web, apps and APIs to separate good and bad behavior, in real time.
Funding: $28 million in venture capital
Biggest investors: Includes U.S. Venture Partners, Blackbird, Airtree, Accomplice and Naval Ravikant.
Customers: Multiple global companies across industries, including neo-banks, fintechs, marketplaces and gaming companies.
Major milestones: The company recently announced its expansion into the U.S., with a bolstered U.S.-based leadership team and the relocation of its corporate headquarters to San Francisco.
Growth plans: The company continues to build out U.S. operations, CEO Alisdair Faulkner told American Banker. Revenue this year will grow five times from 2024, he added.
Skyfire
Agentic AI draws new entrepreneurs
Company: Skyfire
Founders: Amir Sarhangi and Craig DeWitt
HQ: San Francisco
Website:
Year founded: 2022
Use case for banks:
Funding: $9.5 million in seed capital
Investors: Includes Coinbase Ventures, a16z CSX, Neuberger Berman, Brevan Howard Digital, Intersection Growth Partners, DRW, Inception Capital, Arrington Capital, Red Beard Ventures, Sfermion, Circle, FBG, Gemini, Crossbeam Venture Partners, Everyrealm, Draper Associates, Arca, and Ripple.
Customers: Primarily agent developers and agent platforms, including some banks.
Major milestones: Launched the platform in August 2024, and there are now more than 10,000 developers transacting with Agents using Skyfire.
Growth plans: The company has plans to roll out an updated version of the platform that’s more scalable and flexible. It also plans to recruit and sign additional partnerships with financial institutions and internet infrastructure providers, Craig DeWitt, the company’s co-founder, told American Banker.
Crossmint
Where AI intersects with stablecoins
Company: Crossmint
Founders: Rodri Fernández Touza and Alfonso Gómez-Jordana
HQ: New York and Miami
Website:
Use case for banks: All-in-one platform for companies and AI agents to leverage stablecoin and blockchain rails, including wallets, payments, and tokenization.
Founded: March 2022
Funding: $24 million in venture capital.
Investors: Includes Ribbit Capital, Nyca Partners, First Round, Franklin Templeton and Lightspeed Faction.
Customers: Dozens of Fortune 500 companies, one of the 20 largest banks by assets under management and one of the five largest remittance companies, the company’s co-founder Rodri Fernández Touza told American Banker.
Major milestones: In the past year, the company has seen subscription revenue increase by 1,100%, with over 40,000 companies and developers using the Crossmint platform across more than 40 blockchains.
Growth Plans: Continued customer sign-ups, following the recent launch of a new toolkit for agentic commerce. The company also recently launched an open-source toolkit that allows users to launch fintech apps or embed financial services in minutes.
iQoncept – stock.adobe.com
Betting on crypto pay for business
Company name: Merge Money
Founder: Kebbie Sebastian
HQ: London
Website:
Year founded: 2022
Use case for banks: An API-first platform that provides a stablecoin payment infrastructure for businesses.
Funding: $9.5 million in venture capital
Investors: Includes Coinbase and Octopus Ventures
Customers: B2B marketplaces, fintechs, corporate treasurers, licensed crypto companies, and European banks.
Major milestones: Merge received its Electronic Money Institution (EMI) and Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) licenses, which are required by European regulators to hold customer funds in multiple currencies and to convert from USD or Euros into stablecoin or vice versa. The company has expanded coverage of local instant payments to more than 75 countries.
Growth plans: Geographic expansion, including the U.S., founder Kebbie Sebastian told American Banker.
Riding the cross-border wave
Company name: Conduit Technology
Founder: Kirill Gertman
HQ: Boston
Website:
Year founded: 2021
Use case for banks: The platform facilitates cross-border payments in stablecoins or local currencies as an alternative to SWIFT. The company enables faster, cheaper and more reliable cross-border transactions for banks and their customers.
Funding: $53 million in venture capital
Investors: Includes Dragonfly, Altos Ventures, Helios Digital Ventures, and Portage Ventures.
Customers: Banks, fintechs, large multinational corporations and others.
Major milestones: In 2024, transaction volume grew 16 times to more than $10 billion, CEO Kirill Gertman told American Banker. The company also recently signed an agreement with Braza Group, which owns Brazil’s largest foreign exchange bank.
Growth plans: Targeting small to medium banks in the U.S. and elsewhere. The company also has plans to integrate its platform with major bank core providers to make adoption more seamless for smaller banks.