This extension completes a two-tranche fundraise. Tazapay closed an initial Series B in August 2025, led by Peak XV Partners, with the amount undisclosed at that time. The March 26, 2026 extension, led by Circle Ventures, closes the round at $36 million total.

The announcement brings fresh institutional weight to a company that has positioned itself as regulated fiat-settlement infrastructure for stablecoin-based business payments across emerging markets. Circle Ventures is the investment arm of Circle Internet Financial, the issuer of USDC, the world's second-largest stablecoin.

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What Tazapay Does

Tazapay operates as a licensed fiat bridge between stablecoin transactions and local bank accounts. In practice, a business sends USDC or USDT to Tazapay, which converts the funds to local currency and settles to the recipient's bank account in the destination market. The company supports more than 70 markets (a figure referring to payment corridors and local-method coverage areas) across more than 30 countries, works with over 1,000 businesses and fintechs, and reports an annualized payment volume above $10 billion. Revenue has doubled for three consecutive years, and Tazapay separately reports 300 percent year-over-year growth in payment volume. The company says it has reached operational breakeven.

Founded in 2020 by Rahul Shinghal, a former PayPal APAC, Stripe, and ZaloPay executive, the company holds payment licenses in Singapore, Canada, Australia, and the United States. It has license applications pending in the UAE, the EU, Hong Kong, and for a Digital Payment Token (DPT) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). A DPT license would formally authorize Tazapay to deal in digital payment tokens under one of Asia's strictest regulatory frameworks.

Tazapay previously raised a $16.9 million Series A in February 2023, led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia (now Peak XV Partners), with participation from the PayPal Alumni Fund. The current round represents a significant step up in both scale and the caliber of crypto-native institutional backers.

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Why Circle Led the Round

Circle Ventures said in a statement that Tazapay's regulatory infrastructure was the central draw. "Tazapay has built that capability across key emerging markets. Their licensing footprint addresses an essential requirement for enterprise stablecoin-to-fiat settlement," said Brian Schultz, VP at Circle Ventures.

The investment is consistent with Circle Ventures' portfolio strategy. The fund has made 141 investments to date, with a focus on expanding USDC's utility. Its recent emerging-market bets include Nigerian crypto payments startup Ivorypay, South African alternative investment platform Altify, and South African tourism payments firm TurnStay. Coinbase Ventures, another new participant in this round, named stablecoin infrastructure as one of its top investment themes for 2026.

CMT Digital, the Chicago-based crypto fund, closed a $136 million fourth fund in November 2025 specifically to back blockchain-native financial infrastructure. The firm has already deployed roughly 25 percent of that fund into stablecoin-focused companies, including Coinflow and Codex.

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The Market Context

Global stablecoin payment volume reached approximately $390 billion in 2025, roughly double 2024 levels, according to McKinsey and Artemis Analytics data cited by FXC Intelligence. B2B stablecoin payments grew 733 percent year over year, reaching $226 billion, or about 60 percent of total stablecoin payment volume. Industry analysts at AlphaPoint and Thunes project that stablecoins could account for 5 to 10 percent of all cross-border payments by 2030, a range that would represent $2.1 to $4.2 trillion annually.

USDC transaction volume in 2025 reached approximately $18.3 trillion, surpassing USDT's roughly $13.3 trillion in some measurement methodologies, according to data from MEXC and AlphaPoint. Visa reported settling $4.5 billion in stablecoins on an annualized basis as of January 2026, a data point that underscores the growing institutional adoption of stablecoin payment infrastructure.

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Regional Impact: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa

The structural case for Tazapay's infrastructure is clearest in high-cost remittance corridors. The World Bank puts the global average remittance fee at 6.49 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa averages 8.78 percent, and South Asia averages 6.2 percent. Stablecoin-based transfers through licensed fiat bridges run 1.5 to 2.5 percent all-in, including liquidity and compliance costs, according to Web3 Enabler. Settlement time drops from three to five business days for a Lagos-to-Nairobi transfer to roughly 60 seconds.

South Asia is particularly relevant here. Bangladesh alone recorded $3.277 billion in inbound remittances in December 2025, a 22.3 percent year-over-year increase. Traditional corridors into Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal still carry fees in the 5 to 8 percent range with multi-day settlement windows.

The presence of Norinchukin Capital, Japan's largest agricultural cooperative bank, and GMO Venture Partners in the original Series B suggests deliberate attention to Japan-to-South and Southeast Asia remittance flows. Africa is not named explicitly in Tazapay's press materials, but the Circle Ventures investment and Tazapay's pending UAE license point in that direction. The UAE is a critical hub for Africa-facing money flows.

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Agentic Payments: An Undercovered Angle

Tazapay listed agentic payment infrastructure among its stated uses for the new capital. This refers to payment rails designed for autonomous AI agents that execute financial transactions without direct human input at each step. Developers building AI-driven applications in markets with fragmented local currency infrastructure have few regulated options for programmable fiat settlement. Tazapay's licensing base and USDC-to-local-fiat pipeline could fill part of that gap, though the company has not provided further technical detail on this use case in public materials reviewed for this article.

Shinghal articulated the company's long-term direction in August 2025, at the time of the initial Series B close, describing his goal as building "a global payment collection and payout infrastructure built on modern rails," with stablecoin-to-fiat settlement in emerging markets as a central use case.

The company said it will use the Series B proceeds for licensing expansion and go-to-market activity in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Americas. With the US GENIUS Act establishing a federal framework for payment stablecoins in July 2025 and USDC achieving MiCA compliance across the EU in 2024, the regulatory environment for licensed stablecoin infrastructure has become meaningfully clearer since mid-2024.

"Businesses want to move money faster, cheaper, with regulatory confidence. Tazapay's infrastructure addresses this moment perfectly," said Kanupriya Sharda, Chief Business Officer at Tazapay.