Rail

Rail is a regulated payment infrastructure platform that lets businesses move money globally — across both fiat and stablecoins, including Solana-native assets — through a single API, without requiring those businesses to hold their own financial licenses.

What Rail Does

Rail abstracts the complexity of cross-border settlements into a unified developer interface. Fintechs, neobanks, payment providers, and enterprises plug into Rail's API to offer their customers the ability to send and receive money internationally, converting between fiat and digital assets along the way. The platform combines virtual IBANs, named accounts, USD Rails, and third-party payment routing under one roof.

The core value proposition is compliance-as-a-service: Rail manages anti-money laundering screening, fraud controls, and other regulatory obligations on behalf of its clients. A startup fintech without its own banking license can offer regulated payment flows on day one by building on Rail, with the platform's infrastructure absorbing the compliance burden. Rail works with more than twelve banking partners to provide this coverage.

Core Architecture

Rail operates an integrated omnibus ledger that handles both fiat and crypto workflows from a single data model. Rather than forcing clients to stitch together bank APIs, stablecoin on-ramps, and exchange integrations separately, Rail consolidates relationships with qualified custodians, licensed exchanges, licensed lenders, banks, and crypto networks, then exposes them through a consistent API surface.

The platform ships with a management UI in addition to the API, giving operations teams direct access for monitoring transactions, configuring compliance workflows, and running reconciliations without custom tooling.

Supported Assets and Networks

Rail's production asset list spans a wide range of fiat currencies and blockchain networks.

On the fiat side, Rail supports USD, EUR, GBP, MXN, and AED in production, with HKD, SGD, COP, ARS, BRL, and INR listed as forthcoming.

On the digital asset side, Rail covers:

• Solana: SOL, USDC, USDT
• Ethereum: ETH, USDC, USDT, RLUSD, EURC, DAI
• XRP Ledger: XRP, RLUSD
• Bitcoin: BTC
• Polygon: MATIC, USDC (native), USDT (bridged)
• Tron: TRX, USDT
• Near: NEAR, USDC, USDT
• Binance Smart Chain: BNB, USDC (bridged), USDT (bridged)

Solana's representation — native SOL alongside the two dominant stablecoins on the network — positions it as a first-class settlement layer within Rail's multi-chain routing. Supported exchange pairs span Solana as well, meaning Rail clients can route conversions in and out of Solana-native positions directly through the platform.

History and Team

Rail began in 2021 under the name Layer2 Financial, co-founded by CEO Bhanu Kohli and CTO Tarun Mistry in Toronto. The company's initial focus was on digital asset infrastructure before pivoting to a broader global money-movement thesis that combined fiat and stablecoin rails.

In July 2024, Layer2 Financial closed a $10.7 million Series A led by Galaxy Ventures. At the time of the raise, the company was reporting consistent 20 percent month-over-month transaction volume growth — a signal that B2B appetite for stablecoin-powered settlements was accelerating sharply. Three months later, in October 2024, the company rebranded from Layer2 Financial to Rail, a name chosen to reflect its positioning as pure payments infrastructure rather than a digital asset brokerage.

By mid-2025, Rail was on track to process more than 10 percent of the estimated $36 billion in global B2B stablecoin payments — a remarkable footprint for a four-year-old fintech.

Ripple Acquisition

On August 7, 2025, Ripple announced it had agreed to acquire Rail for $200 million in cash and equity — approximately CA$275 million — pending regulatory approvals with an expected close in Q4 2025. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse cited Rail's technology as a catalyst for harmonizing stablecoin transaction flows across Ripple's existing global payment network.

The strategic logic was straightforward: Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin had surpassed $600 million in market capitalization by mid-2025, and Ripple wanted proven settlement infrastructure, not just the stablecoin itself. Rail added virtual accounts and automated back-office infrastructure that Ripple lacked, while Ripple brought 60-plus compliance licenses and a network of institutional payment relationships that Rail could leverage.

Post-acquisition, Rail's documentation and API remain accessible at docs.rail.io, and the platform continues to serve clients while being integrated into Ripple's broader ecosystem. The combined entity supports RLUSD, XRP, and Rail's existing multi-chain asset list, with Solana continuing to be a supported network.

Solana Fit

Solana's settlement characteristics — sub-second finality, transaction costs measured in fractions of a cent, and a native USDC issuance via Circle — make it a practical settlement layer for the high-throughput B2B payment volumes Rail handles. For a platform processing a meaningful share of global stablecoin B2B flow, Solana USDC and USDT are natural assets to include alongside Ethereum-based equivalents, since clients seeking lower settlement cost or higher throughput can route through Solana without changing their integration against Rail's API.

Rail's inclusion of SOL itself alongside USDC and USDT on Solana also gives enterprise clients exposure to the native network asset where business logic requires holding or transacting in SOL rather than a stablecoin.

Summary

Rail built the regulated stablecoin payments infrastructure that enterprises and fintechs actually need: a single API covering compliance, fiat accounts, and multi-chain digital asset settlement including Solana. From a 2021 start as Layer2 Financial through a $10.7M Galaxy-led Series A to a $200M Ripple acquisition in 2025, the company's trajectory reflects how quickly institutional demand for stablecoin rails scaled. Now operating within Ripple's broader payment network, Rail's API and asset coverage — including SOL, USDC, and USDT on Solana — remain active, bringing Solana-native settlement into enterprise payment flows through a compliance-first, single-API gateway.