Stablecoins, once considered a niche experiment, are quickly becoming a backbone of global money movement. The product–market fit is clear: adoption is accelerating, with more than $250B already in circulation and projections pointing to $2T by 2028. At the same time, regulatory changes such as the GENIUS Act in the U.S. and MiCA in Europe have helped transform stablecoins from a speculative asset into foundational infrastructure for the next frontier of payments innovation.
Despite the momentum, one big gap remains: stablecoins aren’t easy to spend in everyday life. Try paying for your coffee, groceries or corporate AWS bill using stablecoins, and you’ll likely encounter roadblocks. Most merchants don’t accept stablecoins directly, and consumers and businesses alike still lean on rewards, fraud protections, and the simple tap-or-swipe convenience of cards. We believe the disconnect is one of the biggest opportunities in the financial services industry today.
That’s where Rain comes in. Co-Founders Farooq (CEO) & Charles (CTO) are tackling this problem head-on. To make stablecoins spendable in the real world, Rain has built a blockchain-based card issuing and stablecoin interoperability platform that unlocks the ‘spend’ use case of digital assets. As a Visa Principal Member, Rain powers B2B and consumer card issuance that settles in stablecoins. The result is the familiarity of a payment card paired with Visa’s global acceptance network of more than 150M merchants.
Since founding the company in 2021, Farooq and Charles have grown Rain into a leading global fintech infrastructure platform powering payins, storage, spending and payouts use cases on stablecoins. Today, the company has more than 100 partners signed, processes millions of payments across 150+ countries, and has achieved 10x year-to-date volume growth.
For these reasons and more, we are thrilled to lead Rain’s $58M Series B and support the team as they redefine what the next generation of payments looks like.
Bringing Transaction Utility to Stablecoins
Rain is building a full-stack fintech infrastructure platform designed for the stablecoin era. Through a developer-friendly API, Rain allows partners to embed stablecoins into their products and services through a single integration – covering money-in, storage, spending, and money-out.
The magic is Rain’s proprietary settlement stack, which allows card transactions on the Visa network to be interoperable with stablecoins across multiple blockchains while abstracting away all the back-end complexity (i.e., tokenizing credit card receivables, compliance, settlement & authorization logic). Put simply, Rain combines Visa’s global acceptance with the always-on, fast and low-cost advantages of stablecoin rails.
Enabling Fintech 2.0: Real-Time & Borderless Financial Experiences
Rain may have started with cards, but it’s ultimately building a global infrastructure platform that lets partners– be it fintechs, global marketplaces, remittance providers, gig economy platforms, banks, etc.– move, spend, and settle digital dollars anywhere in the world, instantly. Whereas traditional financial products are hamstrung by batch-based systems and legacy infrastructure, Rain is building a programmable infrastructure layer with real-time rails and 24/7/365 uptime.
This flexibility has enabled Rain to scale quickly and support a wide range of use cases such as B2B merchant payments (e.g., Nuvei), next-gen corporate cards (e.g., Dakota), neobanks (e.g., KAST), cross-border payments (e.g., Cadana, Wallbit, Takenos), financial inclusion (e.g., Offramp), government-sponsored programs (e.g., Wyoming Frontier Stable Token) and more.
With the funding from this round, Rain will be expanding its product suite and extending global reach in regions such as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, & Asia Pacific, becoming a one-stop shop for institutions moving to stablecoin-based payments.
Backing the Dynamic Duo Behind the ‘Rainmakers’
Farooq Malik & Charles Naut, Co-founders, Rain
Farooq and Charles represent the kind of founding team this space desperately needs – one that can navigate both the technical complexity of blockchain infrastructure and the regulatory intricacies of traditional finance. As CIO at the North American Development Bank, Farooq built a rare fluency in both regulatory frameworks and payment network operations.
That foundation has been critical for Rain in securing Visa Principal Member status and expanding its partnership with Visa. On the other hand, Charles brings the technical depth needed to architect multi-chain settlement infrastructure, having previously built and scaled fintech systems at several companies, including Playbook HR through its acquisition by Intuit.
What stood out to us during our conversations with the team wasn’t just their credentials, but how they’ve blended their strengths to build genuine partnerships rather than the usual vendor relationships. In payments infrastructure, where trust and technical execution are equally critical, Farooq and Charles have proven they can deliver on both. The founding team’s chemistry and energy permeate the high-velocity culture that the team is building, who are appropriately dubbed the ‘Rainmakers.’
Unlocking the $2T+ Stablecoin Opportunity
At Sapphire Ventures, we have backed category-defining payments & fintech infrastructure companies, including AvidXchange, BioCatch, Block (aka Square), Chargebee, Collectly, Currencycloud, Current, Feedzai, Mercury, Paytm, Upvest, Wise, and Yapily. As the next wave of fintech innovation takes shape around stablecoins, Rain is one of the most critical infrastructure players enabling real-world utility. We believe Rain is doing for stablecoins what Stripe did for online payments: abstracting complexity into elegant APIs and unleashing innovation on top to drive the next era of financial services forward. We’re honored to back Farooq, Charles and the entire Rain team on their mission to make stablecoins truly usable for everyday commerce.
If you’re interested in learning more about the company or exploring opportunities to join the rapidly growing team of ‘Rainmakers,’ you can find more information here.
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