Caliza Raises $8.5 Million to Ease Cross Border Payments Using USDC in Latam

Caliza, a fintech company headquartered in the U.S. but focused on Latam, has raised $8.5 million in a funding round led by Initialized, seeking to expand the reach of its foothold in Brazil. The company offers B2B solutions focusing on USDC, Circle’s regulated stablecoin, providing rails for easing cross-border payments for its customers.

Caliza Raises $8.5 Million to Further Its Stablecoin Cross-Border Payment Service Offering

Alternative payment services thrive in Latin America due to their advantages compared to traditional payment rails. Caliza, a business-to-business (B2B) focused company that offers stablecoin-based services, has recently raised $8.5 million to expand in Brazil, establishing a foothold for reaching other countries in Latam next.

The funding round was led by Initialized Capital, a VC company focusing on startups still in its seed stages, and will be used to double its workforce that is mostly established in Brazil, according to reports.

Ezra Kebrab, the founder of Caliza, sought to take advantage of the problems that cross-border transactions and access to dollars represented for businesses and users leveraging these in Latam. This led him to launch a company to address the problem of using SWIFT in the region, the de facto standard for banking transactions.

Caliza uses its application programming interface (API) and a specific front end to intermediate payments using USDC, the second largest stablecoin of the cryptocurrency market by capitalization. Also, it provides access to a regulated dollar-based economy to its customers.

While the company has not discussed its customer list, according to Tech Crunch, they are banks and fintech companies that seek to add this transaction functionality to their platforms, and individuals to make remittances and complete payroll payments.

Caliza raised $5.3 million in September, leveraging that impulse to launch their operations in Brazil at that time. Now, according to Kebrab, the company seeks to expand to Mexico in the fall, a little later than expected likely due to its focus on compliance and fulfilling the country’s regulations.

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