coindesk.com
Stablecoin-focused digital bank Fasset said Monday it has raised $68 million in a funding round led by Japan's SBI Group, valuing the company at $1 billion just three months after its previous financing.
The investment follows a $51 million round in May, bringing Fasset's total funding this year to $119 million. Early backer Speedinvest and a group of strategic investors participated in that earlier round.
Fasset, headquartered in Los Angeles, operates a financial platform that lets consumers and businesses hold, send, spend and invest across currencies and assets, using stablecoins as part of the settlement infrastructure behind the scenes. The company said it processes more than $40 billion in annualized transaction volume across 125 countries.
The firm’s business has expanded sharply over the past year, CEO Mohammad Raafi Hossain told CoinDesk. Revenue has grown roughly six-fold year over year, and the company has been profitable for 12 consecutive months, he said. Fasset did not disclose its revenue or profit figures.
Revenue came mainly from its institutional and retail businesses, including growing stablecoin payments and settlement activity, Hossain said. Cards and bank accounts are beginning to generate new revenue, he added.
The firm is part of a broader wave of fintechs building financial services around blockchain networks and stablecoins. Once used mainly to move money between crypto exchanges, stablecoins are increasingly playing a role in remittances, corporate treasury operations, and international payments. The use case is especially relevant in emerging markets, where cross-border transfers can pass through several correspondent banks, adding time and fees along the way.
Fasset’s business runs on OWN Network, a proprietary, AI-enabled Ethereum Layer 2 infrastructure built on Arbitrum. The network connects banks, telecom companies, payment firms, liquidity providers, and other financial institutions across more than 100 banking corridors. Stablecoins can serve as the behind-the-scenes settlement layer, even when customers are not explicitly sending stablecoins.
“Customers interact with stablecoins at many different points on our platform,” Hossain said. “They might be moving between a bank account, a payment product, a currency or another asset, while stablecoins provide the settlement rail underneath.”
Expanding through SBI
The latest funding also deepens Fasset's ties with SBI and provides it with access to the Japanese group's broader financial network.
The Japanese financial services provider has emerged as one of the more active traditional financial groups in digital assets, with investments spanning Ripple, Circle (CRCL) and DeFi lender Morpho MORPHO$2.3562. The Japanese conglomerate also owns crypto liquidity provider B2C2 and has backed blockchain infrastructure and stablecoin projects as it builds out its digital-asset business.