Altitude

Altitude is a stablecoin-native financial operating system for businesses, built on Solana by the team behind Squads Protocol. It offers global USD and EUR accounts, corporate cards, cross-border payments, and yield on balances to companies operating across 150 or more countries, without requiring a traditional bank relationship or a US entity.

What Altitude Does

Running financial operations across borders has historically demanded a patchwork of bank accounts, correspondent banking relationships, wire transfer delays, and compliance paperwork calibrated to every jurisdiction. Altitude replaces that with a single operating account that works on both conventional banking rails and stablecoin infrastructure.

Companies open USD and EUR accounts through Altitude, receiving dedicated US routing numbers and SEPA IBANs for accepting ACH, wire, and SEPA transfers with no platform fees. They can hold balances in stablecoins or fiat-equivalent form, convert between the two instantly and fee-free at any hour, and route payments through local rails in markets including the US, Europe, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and the UK for faster and cheaper settlement.

The platform is designed for exporters, globally distributed remote teams, crypto-native companies, and cross-border agencies. Since its public launch in December 2025, Altitude has processed over 200 million dollars in payments for these customer segments.

Core Features

Multi-currency accounts. Businesses open USD and EUR accounts directly through Altitude, with dedicated US routing numbers and SEPA IBANs for receiving ACH, wire, and SEPA transfers at no platform cost.

Global payments. Funds move across 150-plus countries via layered rails. SWIFT transfers coexist with local payment networks for markets where correspondent banking is slow or costly. Stablecoin settlement is available for instant, 24/7 transfers without banking intermediaries.

Corporate cards. Teams issue unlimited virtual corporate cards under a single account. Cards earn tiered cashback: 2% on travel, 1.5% on AI, cloud, and SaaS purchases, and 1% on everything else, paid monthly in cash. Spending limits, policies, and approvals are configurable per card before any transaction is authorized.

Yield on balances. Eligible accounts earn 5.00% APY through Altitude Rewards on balances starting at 10,000 dollars, with interest accruing on stablecoin-denominated holdings.

CFO stack. Altitude consolidates invoicing, bill pay, expense reimbursements, and accounting into one interface. An AI agent reads bills and receipts, matches them to transaction records, and suggests accounting categories, reducing manual reconciliation for finance teams.

Stablecoin conversion. Users convert between USD and EUR balances and stablecoins instantly, 24/7, without fees.

Technology and Architecture

Altitude is built directly on Squads Protocol, the smart account standard that Squads developed for Solana, which underpins the self-custodial infrastructure securing over 10 billion dollars in value across more than 450 teams in the broader Solana ecosystem.

Funds held through Altitude sit in self-custodial smart accounts on Solana. The organization, not Altitude or a bank, retains cryptographic ownership of its treasury. Multi-party approval flows, role-based permissions, multi-factor authentication, and code-enforced spending policies are built into the account layer rather than administered through a bank's internal controls.

For regulated financial functions, fiat on-ramps, off-ramps, and local payment rails, Altitude routes through a network of licensed payment service providers including Bridge, MoonPay, Infinite, and Due, enabling global coverage without requiring Altitude itself to hold a banking license in every jurisdiction.

Compliance is handled through a proprietary engine that runs continuous sanctions screening, AML monitoring, transaction surveillance, and KYB verification at the account level.

Security and Audits

The security foundation is Squads Protocol v4, which has undergone three independent audits by Trail of Bits, OtterSec, and Neodyme. Formal verification, a mathematical proof of program correctness, has been completed by both Certora and OtterSec, making Squads Protocol the first formally verified smart contract on Solana.

At the application layer, Altitude holds SOC 2 Type I certification, reflecting that its operational security controls meet recognized industry standards. The self-custodial model means the protocol itself enforces account policy rather than delegating trust to the service provider.

Tokens and Assets

Altitude does not issue a native protocol token. The platform operates around stablecoins, primarily USDC and other regulated dollar-pegged instruments, as the underlying settlement and storage layer. Users interact with USD and EUR balances that can be held, converted to stablecoins, or moved across supported rails at will. Yield is denominated in stablecoins through Altitude Rewards.

Team and Funding History

Altitude is the second major product from Squads, founded by CEO Stepan Simkin. The company first established itself as the multisig security infrastructure provider for Solana's institutional and protocol-level treasuries, building the formal-verification stack that underpins the Squads Protocol ecosystem, before extending that infrastructure toward business finance.

As of April 2026, Squads has raised a total of 42.9 million dollars. The most recent round, 18 million dollars, was led by Solana Ventures, with co-investment from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, Collab+Currency, Electric Capital, Placeholder, Jump Crypto, and Robot Ventures. Haun Ventures is a returning investor. The round was intended to scale Altitude's payment volume, compliance infrastructure, and go-to-market operations. The company employs 38 people and is hiring in marketing, sales, and compliance.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Altitude's positioning within the Solana ecosystem is unusual: it uses Solana's infrastructure not for DeFi speculation but as a settlement and programmability layer for conventional business finance. By building on Squads Protocol, the same infrastructure that protocols and DAOs use to manage treasury multisigs, Altitude extends Solana's reach into a market largely untouched by on-chain tooling: corporate financial operations.

The choice of Solana is deliberate. The chain's low transaction costs, high throughput, and the existing 10 billion dollars in value already secured through Squads Protocol provide credible infrastructure for institutional-grade payment volumes. Squads CEO Stepan Simkin has publicly argued that stablecoins represent a structural shift that inverts the moats of traditional fintech, and Altitude is the product expression of that thesis.

For businesses still banking with institutions built on SWIFT, ACH, and multi-day settlement windows, Altitude offers a direct alternative: accounts that are self-custodial, globally accessible by default, available in 150-plus countries including the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, UAE, and India, and capable of operating around the clock without the overhead of traditional correspondent banking relationships.