InFlow Pay

InFlow Pay is a global payment infrastructure platform and stablecoin-native Merchant of Record built for cross-border small and medium-sized businesses. Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Paris, France, the company positions itself as "Stripe for Cross-Border SMBs" — handling the full stack of international payment complexity, including multi-currency collection, tax compliance, regulatory obligations, and settlement, so merchants can focus on growth rather than financial plumbing.

The project was co-founded by Hanafi Issahnane and Danny Ba, a blockchain technologist with prior experience working with the French government. InFlow Pay raised €1.1 million in a pre-seed round in April 2025 from investors including Plug and Play, Gnosis, Rockstart, BPI France, and Kima Ventures, and is a graduate of the Alliance Accelerator — a Web3-focused accelerator that shaped the team's stablecoin-native architecture. Notable clients include CM.com, Ledger, and StarkWare.

The Problem InFlow Pay Addresses

Cross-border commerce is notoriously friction-heavy for SMBs. Traditional payment processors impose layered fees — separate charges for international cards, FX conversion, payouts, and chargebacks — often resulting in effective rates far higher than their advertised minimums. Merchants scaling internationally must also navigate tax registration in multiple jurisdictions, local banking relationships, and the risk of frozen funds or arbitrary account terminations by custodial processors.

InFlow Pay's approach is to act as the Merchant of Record for its clients, absorbing regulatory and tax liability across markets, and to settle in stablecoins rather than through traditional correspondent banking rails, eliminating delays and intermediate costs. The company claims its all-in pricing is on average 53% cheaper than competitors for comparable international transactions.

How It Works

InFlow Pay's architecture operates across three stages: collection, self-custody, and payout.

Collection. Merchants accept payments through multiple methods: card payments (Visa and Mastercard globally), Open Banking transfers via SEPA for the EU and Faster Payments for the UK, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. These are accessible through three interfaces: hosted payment links, embeddable card forms, and a developer API. For subscription-based businesses, the platform supports recurring billing with trial periods, entry fees, and waitlists, including native Discord integrations for community-gated products.

Self-Custody Infrastructure. Rather than pooling merchant funds in a custodial account, InFlow Pay maintains a self-custody model in which each merchant's funds remain under their control at all times. This eliminates exposure to account freezes — a frequent pain point with traditional processors during fraud investigations or policy disputes. Merchants also earn a 3–5% annual yield on balances held on the platform.

Payout. Merchants can withdraw funds to bank accounts denominated in EUR, GBP, or USD, or to crypto wallets as USDC on their network of choice: Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, Base, or Starknet. InFlow Pay also issues virtual IBANs, allowing businesses to receive fiat wires directly, and supports third-party payout workflows for marketplaces and platforms.

Solana Integration

Solana is one of InFlow Pay's supported USDC settlement networks, giving merchants the option to receive funds at Solana's characteristic speed and fee profile — sub-second finality and transaction costs measured in fractions of a cent. For SMBs working with Solana-native counterparties or DeFi treasuries, this removes a conversion step that would otherwise require bridging from slower or more expensive networks.

The inclusion of Solana reflects InFlow Pay's multi-chain positioning: the settlement network is a configurable output rather than a fixed infrastructure choice, with merchants selecting whichever chain best fits their treasury requirements or counterparty preferences.

Marketplace and Platform Tools

For marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and creator economies, InFlow Pay offers a Connect product that handles multi-party money movement. Features include seller onboarding with embedded KYC/KYB verification, configurable payment splits between platform and seller, and platform fee collection. Webhooks deliver real-time event notifications to downstream systems.

Shopify merchants can integrate InFlow Pay directly into their storefronts. Tax compliance is handled through an integration with Quaderno, which automates tax calculation and reporting across jurisdictions — addressing one of the most operationally complex aspects of cross-border commerce for SMBs that lack dedicated finance teams.

Pricing

InFlow Pay's standard pricing is 4% + $0.35 per transaction, presented as an all-in rate with no additional surcharges for international cards, FX conversion, or payouts. The company claims this structure is on average 53% cheaper than competitors for comparable international transactions. Enterprise clients can negotiate custom rates based on volume, and the platform provides dedicated account management accessible via WhatsApp and WeChat.

Security and Custody Model

InFlow Pay's primary security argument centers on its self-custody infrastructure: merchants retain control over their funds at all times, reducing exposure to processor insolvency, policy changes, or compliance holds. The platform advertises bank-grade fraud protection and dedicated chargeback dispute support.

No public smart contract security audits have been disclosed. As InFlow Pay operates as a Merchant of Record rather than a decentralized protocol, the primary risk profile is that of a regulated payments company rather than a smart contract platform — counterparty risk is concentrated at the company level, while the self-custody design reduces pooled custody risk relative to conventional processors.

Team and Backing

The company was co-founded by Hanafi Issahnane and Danny Ba out of Paris. Danny Ba has a background in blockchain technology, including prior experience with the French government, grounding the team in both technical and regulatory aspects of cross-border finance. InFlow Pay is a graduate of the Alliance Accelerator, a Web3-focused program whose cohort has included a number of Solana-adjacent infrastructure projects.

Investors in the April 2025 pre-seed round include Plug and Play, Gnosis, Rockstart, BPI France, and Kima Ventures.

Ecosystem Fit

For Solana's ecosystem, InFlow Pay represents the real-world commercial side of stablecoin adoption: a company using Solana as settlement infrastructure for ordinary SMB commerce rather than DeFi-native applications. As USDC circulation on Solana has grown substantially — with major card networks and financial institutions integrating Solana-based settlement — InFlow Pay is positioned at the intersection of traditional payment processing and blockchain rails.

The platform's model is particularly relevant for digital-product businesses, creator economy platforms, and Web3-adjacent companies whose customers pay via card but whose treasuries or service providers operate in stablecoins. By handling compliance, tax, and chargeback complexity on the fiat intake side while offering stablecoin payouts on the settlement side, InFlow Pay bridges the operational gap that has historically kept SMBs from adopting crypto treasury management.