Pomegra
Tether led Mural's $15M Series A, lifting total funding to $28M for the startup that gives fintechs one account for dollars, local currencies and stablecoins.
Key Takeaways
- Mural raised a $15M Series A led by Tether, with North Island Ventures joining, for $28M in total funding.
- The company has processed $2.1B across 128 countries since its 2025 API launch. Valuation is undisclosed.
- Fresh capital goes to global expansion and compliance infrastructure for agent-driven payments.
Lead
Mural, a New York startup founded in 2022 by former Palantir engineers Sinclair Toffa and Chris Fernandes, announced a $15M Series A on October 20, 2026. Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, led the round. North Island Ventures and existing investors also took part, bringing total capital raised to $28M. The company did not disclose a valuation.
The round arrives days after Mural dropped "Pay" from its name, moving from Mural Pay to Mural. It positions the company as infrastructure for fintechs, payroll providers and software firms rather than a consumer payments app.
What Does Mural Actually Do?
Mural sells accounts, payments, identity and compliance tooling that lets customers hold and move US dollars, local currencies and stablecoins from a single account. Customers build their own financial products on top, such as payroll and remittance workflows. Mural handles the licenses, bank relationships and connections to both blockchain and traditional payment rails.
The platform includes controls such as account limits, approved counterparties and custom payment approvals. Named customers include Deel, Opera and Axexo. Money transmission runs through Mural Networks, Inc., a FinCEN-registered money services business that is licensed in several US states and works through FDIC-insured banks elsewhere.
Mural says it has processed $2.1B in payments across 128 countries since launching its API in 2025. Volume in 2026 is nearly six times the 2025 total, a steep curve from a small base.
How Much Has Mural Raised, and From Whom?
Mural has raised $28M across all rounds, of which the $15M Series A is the largest. The company previously closed a $5M seed round in 2022, plus pre-seed and interim financing from earlier backers. The remaining balance sits in those earlier and interim instruments, and the company has not itemized them.
The Series A is nearly three times the size of the seed. That growth tracks the volume figures, though a $15M check is modest next to the capital flowing into larger payments rivals. Withholding the valuation leaves outsiders unable to judge what Tether paid for its position.
Why Is Tether Backing a Payments Infrastructure Startup?
Tether benefits when more businesses hold and settle in USDT-linked rails, and Mural sits between those rails and the bank accounts fintechs already use. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino framed the bet around software agents, saying they "will need access to payment systems that operate around the clock and can reach people across the world."
Toffa made a similar pitch, arguing that the economy is about to gain 10 billion new participants and that none of them are human. Treat that as the company's thesis rather than a forecast. Still, the practical question is concrete: who issues accounts and runs compliance when software, not a person, initiates a payment?
Tether has been placing strategic bets across payments and fintech, and a stake in a licensed account layer gives the issuer a distribution channel it does not have to build itself.
What Is the Market Backdrop for Stablecoin Payments?
Stablecoin payment volume reached about $400B in the first eight months of 2026, according to an Alvarez & Marsal report. Cross-border stablecoin flows totaled $220B between July 2025 and June 2026, up 78% from the prior year.
Those figures explain the investor interest, but they also show how crowded the field is. Mural competes with other stablecoin infrastructure providers and with banks adding tokenized dollar products. Its edge is breadth: licenses, bank partners and compliance in one integration, which suits fintechs that would rather not apply for money transmitter licenses state by state.
Where Will the Money Go?
The company plans to spend on global expansion and on regulatory and payments infrastructure for what it calls agentic finance. Latin America is a stated priority, and Mural intends to hire a country manager in Argentina. Its roughly 30 employees are spread across New York, Denver, Bogotá, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico, with offices in Denver and Bogotá.
Hiring there fits the corridor mix: payroll and remittance flows into Latin America are among the most active uses of stablecoins for ordinary businesses.
What Are the Risks?
Execution risk is the first issue. Scaling licenses and bank relationships across many jurisdictions is slow, and each new country adds compliance cost. A 30-person team covering 128 countries of activity relies heavily on partner banks.
Concentration is the second. Having the largest stablecoin issuer as lead investor may attract customers who prefer USDT, and repel those who want a neutral platform. Regulatory shifts in the US or Latin America could also change the economics of stablecoin settlement quickly.
Outlook
Mural enters its next phase with $28M raised, 30 staff and a pipeline of fintech customers moving real volume. The next signals to watch are whether the 2026 growth rate holds, whether the Argentina hire and wider Latin American push land new licenses and partners, and whether demand from automated agents materializes beyond pitch decks. Valuation disclosure, if it comes with a later round, will show how the market prices that bet.
