Latitude, a Texas-based payments infrastructure company, raised $35 million in Series A funding Wednesday to expand stablecoin-to-fiat conversion across emerging markets. Oak HC/FT led the round, with participation from NEA, Coinbase, Lightspeed Faction, and OpenFX.
The company solves a concrete problem: stablecoins are nearly worthless to recipients in Vietnam, Nigeria, or Mexico unless they can be converted into local currency instantly through existing bank accounts or mobile wallets. Latitude licenses its own payment infrastructure in target regions rather than relying on third-party partners, a regulatory moat that most stablecoin platforms have avoided.
CEO Cyril Mathew, who previously led international payments at Uber and stablecoin payouts at Stripe, saw the problem firsthand. At Uber, a London-based driver remitted wages to Morocco through a middleman at 20 percent cost. At Stripe, his team launched stablecoin payouts in 100 countries—but adoption stalled because recipients wanted spendable local currency, not tokens requiring wallet setup and seed phrases.
Latitude's clients include neobanks, payroll platforms, marketplaces, and financial firms. Neobanks can integrate Latitude's API to handle stablecoin-to-local-currency conversion across 80 countries without building the capability in-house. The company operates a 15-person team across New York, San Francisco, and London and holds payment licenses in 45 countries. It raised $8 million in seed funding previously.
Cofounder Brian Wrightson and Vivek Morzaria, both with tenures at Stripe, Uber, Coinbase, and Meta, joined Mathew in late 2024. The Series A funding will support hiring in compliance, engineering, legal, and sales as Latitude pursues direct regulatory licenses in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
