Latest news with #PrabhakarReddy
Finextra
26-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
OpenFX raises $23m to bring real-time settlement to cross-border payments
Foreign exchange infrastructure company OpenFX has emerged from stealth with $23 million in funding led by Accel. 0 FX, Lightspeed Faction, Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, and Hash3 joined the round for OpenFX, the brainchild of Prabhakar Reddy, who previously co-founded digital asset prime brokerage FalconX. The startup is building a real-time, open, transparent FX network that enables near-instant settlement of cross-border transactions. The company claims its platform reduces payment friction by making FX transfers 99% faster and up to 90% cheaper, while operating 24/7/365. Its multi-layer liquidity architecture connects traditional banking rails with digital-native systems, enabling 90% of transactions to settle in under 60 minutes, compared to the industry standard of two to seven days. Launched in stealth in early 2024, OpenFX has validated its cross-border payment platform and settlement network at scale, processing billions in transactions across the top G20 FX pairs, signing up remittance providers, neobanks, brokerages, payment processors, and global payroll companies. The new funding will be used for a push into Latin American and Asian markets, launching treasury management solutions, and extending the firm's regulatory framework across strategic jurisdictions. Says Reddy: "The $200 trillion annual FX market still runs on infrastructure designed in the 1970s, trapping approximately $4 trillion in working capital and extracting hundreds of billions in unnecessary fees annually. "While domestic real-time payments have become the standard, cross-border money movement remains stuck in an analog era. We're building the critical settlement infrastructure needed for the AI-driven economy, where money moves as freely as data—unrestricted by time zones, banking hours, or legacy systems."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenFX secures $23m in initial financing round
OpenFX, an FX infrastructure firm facilitating cross-border payments, has emerged from stealth after raising $23m. The funding round was led by venture capital firm Accel. It also saw contributions from NFX, Lightspeed Faction, Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, Hash3, and several fintech investors. The newly acquired funds will be allocated for immediate expansion plans in Latin America and Asia, the introduction of treasury management solutions, and the extension of its regulatory framework to cover more jurisdictions. This follows the company reaching $10bn in annualised transaction volume within a year of its launch in early 2024. The company, founded by entrepreneur Prabhakar Reddy, aims to build an FX network that enables real-time, and near-instant settlement of cross-border transactions. OpenFX's platform is designed to reduce the time and cost associated with FX transfers, operating to bypass the constraints of traditional banking hours. The company utilises a multi-layer liquidity architecture that integrates conventional banking systems with digital-native technologies. The platform customer base include remittance providers, neobanks, brokerages, payment processors, and global payroll companies. The leadership team at OpenFX brings together expertise from various sectors, including traditional finance, blockchain infrastructure, and global payments. Reddy said: "While domestic real-time payments have become the standard, cross-border money movement remains stuck in an analog era. We're building the critical settlement infrastructure needed for the AI-driven economy, where money moves as freely as data—unrestricted by time zones, banking hours, or legacy systems." 'We're building the invisible rails that will power the next decade of global commerce—making international payments as seamless, instant, and reliable as sending an email." "OpenFX secures $23m in initial financing round " was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Entrepreneur
23-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Accel Leads USD 23 Mn Round in OpenFX
The round also saw participation from NFX, Lightspeed Faction, Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, Hash3, and other strategic fintech investors. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. OpenFX, a pioneering FX infrastructure startup, has officially emerged from stealth, announcing a USD 23 million funding round led by Accel. The round also saw participation from NFX, Lightspeed Faction, Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, Hash3, and other strategic fintech investors. This funding will fuel the company's ambitious plans to expand across Latin America and Asia, launch treasury management products, and scale its regulatory footprint globally. The brainchild of Prabhakar Reddy—co-founder and former COO of USD 8 billion-valued digital asset brokerage FalconX—OpenFX was founded in early 2024 to revolutionise cross-border payments. In less than a year, the startup claims to have processed over USD 10 billion in annualised transaction volume. By leveraging cutting-edge payment rails and an innovative last-mile liquidity model, OpenFX enables real-time, 24/7/365 FX settlement—making global payments 99% faster and up to 90% cheaper than legacy systems. "The USD 200 trillion FX market still runs on 1970s-era infrastructure, trapping USD 4 trillion in working capital," said Prabhakar Reddy, Founder and CEO of OpenFX. "We're building the critical settlement infrastructure for the AI-driven economy—where money moves as freely as data." OpenFX's platform connects traditional financial systems with digital-native infrastructures through a multi-layer liquidity architecture. This allows 90% of transactions to settle within 60 minutes—compared to the industry's 2-7 day norm—without the need for massive balance sheets. The platform has already seen rapid adoption among neobanks, remittance firms, brokerages, global payroll providers, and fintechs, with some clients hitting USD 100 million in transaction volume within just 17 days. "Shekhar Kirani, Partner at Accel, shared: "OpenFX combines an exceptional founding team with a massive market opportunity. They're building the AWS of global finance—trusted infrastructure that empowers enterprises and developers to modernize cross-border commerce." OpenFX's 42-person global team brings experience from heavyweights like PayPal, Affirm, Slack, JP Morgan, Citi, and Microsoft, united by a vision to digitize global money movement. From the US and UK to India and the UAE, their mission is clear: make money move as seamlessly as an email. As OpenFX continues to scale, it is not just disrupting foreign exchange—it is redefining the very rails of global commerce in the digital age.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenFX raises $23 million led by Accel to build near-instant cross-border transactions
Outside of AI, there's no hotter sector than stablecoins. Big tech companies like Meta are exploring integration, Congress is on the precipice of advancing legislation, and venture investors—including generalist funds otherwise wary of diving back into crypto—are showering startups with funding. The latest is OpenFX, an infrastructure firm founded by Prabhakar Reddy, which is emerging from stealth with $23 million in funding led by Accel. For those not versed in blockchain jargon, stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency pegged to an underlying asset, such as a fiat currency or a commodity like gold, and designed to stay at a certain price. By far, the most popular version has been dollar-backed stablecoins, with the market leaders Tether and USDC holding a combined market capitalization of over $200 billion. While stablecoins serve an obvious utility for crypto players, who can settle and store capital in dollar-like assets without having to move back and forth between cryptocurrencies and fiat, they're becoming increasingly feasible for a number of non-crypto use cases, from remittances to global payroll. Other than Bitcoin, stablecoins are poised to become the long-awaited 'killer app' that crypto evangelists have long promised, though the technology itself is still in its early days. That's where companies like OpenFX come in. Readers of this newsletter have probably heard of Bridge, whose $1.1 billion acquisition by Stripe last October thrust stablecoins into the Silicon Valley consciousness. Bridge, along with its main competitor BVNK, helps companies move between fiat and stablecoins, allowing them to adopt stablecoins as a payment rail without having to manage the complicated crypto processes themselves. Take, for example, SpaceX, which uses Bridge to collect payments in different jurisdictions and move them through stablecoins into its central treasury, or Deel, which uses BVNK to pay contractors globally. OpenFX is one layer more abstract. The major roadblock for stablecoins has always been that, while moving around crypto dollars may be near instantaneous and free, getting those crypto dollars into actual dollars (or other currencies) still means relying on the same old rails that blockchain is trying to replace. Until your neighborhood grocery store, and the neighborhood grocery store in Argentina and Nigeria, start accepting Tether or USDC, it doesn't matter how fast and cheap stablecoins are. This is the so-called 'last mile' dilemma, and it's where OpenFX comes in. Before starting OpenFX, Reddy was an investor at Accel in India and a serial entrepreneur, though his most successful company was his last—the institutional-focused crypto brokerage firm FalconX, which he decided to build after trying to do large block trades of crypto himself while at Accel. FalconX was last valued at $8 billion. While working on FalconX, Reddy began to see how global cross-border money movement worked, facilitated by the SWIFT network between financial institutions. 'I saw how broken and fragmented it was,' Reddy told me. 'All these ideas started churning behind the scenes.' He decided to start work on OpenFX, which would help realize 24/7/365 money movement by solving the last-mile problem. Reddy said his goal is to supplant SWIFT. While Bridge and BVNK help companies adopt stablecoins as a payment rail, OpenFX will help move between fiat and stablecoins on the backend, as well as rework the costly foreign exchange process by using stablecoins as the intermediary to reduce fees, hence the startup's name. OpenFX started coding its product in early 2024, with the first trade executed in March 2024. Reddy declined to name any clients, but said OpenFX is targeting fintech 2.0 companies such as remittance companies, neobanks, and payroll processors—think Nubank, Revolut, and Remitly. They're currently live with seven currencies—including dollars, euros, and Mexican pesos—with a plan to expand to 10 by the summer, including in Southeast Asia. Reddy says that OpenFX is able to bring FX spreads down from around 69 basis points to sub-10, with 90% of its transactions settling in 60 minutes. If successful at scale, it could be enough of a technological leap for stablecoins to take off beyond pilots and experimentation. 'We're building this company with one single mission,' Reddy told me. 'To make money move across borders as seamlessly as data.' Leo SchwartzX: @leomschwartzEmail: Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here. Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today's newsletter. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Wire
22-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
OpenFX Raises $23M in Initial Funding to Revolutionize Cross-Border Payments with Real-Time FX Settlement Capabilities
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- OpenFX, the FX infrastructure company revolutionizing cross-border payments, today announced its emergence from stealth with $23 million in funding led by Accel, with participation from NFX, Lightspeed Faction, Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, Hash3 and strategic fintech investors. This milestone follows the company's unprecedented growth from $0 to $10 billion in annualized transaction volume in under 12 months since its stealth launch in early 2024. Founded by serial entrepreneur Prabhakar Reddy, former co-founder & COO of digital asset prime brokerage FalconX (valued at $8B), OpenFX is building a real-time, open, transparent FX network that enables near-instant settlement of cross-border transactions. The company's platform dramatically reduces payment friction by making FX transfers 99% faster and up to 90% cheaper, while operating 24/7/365 - eliminating the constraints of banking hours, weekends, and holidays. "The $200 trillion annual FX market still runs on infrastructure designed in the 1970s, trapping approximately $4 trillion in working capital and extracting hundreds of billions in unnecessary fees annually," said Prabhakar Reddy, Founder and CEO of OpenFX. " While domestic real-time payments have become the standard, cross-border money movement remains stuck in an analog era. We're building the critical settlement infrastructure needed for the AI-driven economy, where money moves as freely as data—unrestricted by time zones, banking hours, or legacy systems." OpenFX's multi-layer liquidity architecture leverages next-generation financial technology to connect traditional banking rails with digital-native systems, enabling 90% of transactions to settle in under 60 minutes, compared to the industry standard of 2-7 days. The company's capital-efficient liquidity model eliminates the need for massive balance sheets typically required by traditional FX providers. Over the last 12 months, OpenFX has validated its cross-border payment platform and settlement network at scale, processing billions in transactions across the top G20 FX pairs while maintaining institutional-grade security and reliability. Early customers span global geographies and major FinTech categories - from remittance providers, neobanks, brokerages, payment processors, and global payroll companies - and have witnessed a remarkable transformation in their FX money movement experience, resulting in 8-10x growth in quarter-over-quarter volumes. In one striking example, a recently onboarded client scaled from zero to $100 million in transaction volume within just 17 days of integration. ' OpenFX represents that rare combination of an exceptional founding team tackling a massive market inefficiency with institutional-grade infrastructure,' said Shekhar Kirani, Partner at Accel. ' What convinced us was their commitment to building a highly secure, trusted platform that enterprises can rely on, coupled with their extraordinary execution capabilities. They're building what could become the AWS of global finance: secure, trusted infrastructure that developers and businesses can use to transform cross-border commerce. ' The company's leadership team brings deep expertise across traditional finance, blockchain infrastructure, and global payments, with key executives previously building and scaling multiple billion-dollar companies, including FalconX, PayPal, Slack, Affirm and Kraken. The broader team of 42 includes talent from JP Morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Bank of America, Nium, and Microsoft. " In a world transformed by AI and agentic payments, the final frontier of digital transformation is the movement of money itself," added Reddy. " We're building the invisible rails that will power the next decade of global commerce—making international payments as seamless, instant, and reliable as sending an email." This funding will accelerate OpenFX's mission to rewire the global financial system, with immediate plans to expand into key Latin American and Asian markets, launch its innovative treasury management solutions, and extend its regulatory framework across strategic jurisdictions. About OpenFX OpenFX is creating the financial market infrastructure for the AI economy through its real-time cross-border payments platform and settlement network. By combining the power of new-age payment rails and innovative last-mile liquidity sourcing models, OpenFX enables near-instant FX settlements across borders—making money transfers 99% faster, up to 90% cheaper, and available 24/7/365. Founded in 2024 by serial entrepreneur Prabhakar Reddy, the company has grown to a team of 42 operating globally across the US, UK, UAE and India. Learn more at
