Trace Finance

Trace Finance is a regulated financial infrastructure company that connects stablecoin settlement with local banking rails to enable cross-border payments across Latin America and emerging markets. Founded in São Paulo in 2021, the company targets the structural gap between dollar-linked digital assets and the fragmented local payment networks that still determine how money actually moves within countries like Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia.

The core thesis is what the company calls the stablecoin sandwich: enterprises accept or send value in stablecoins, and Trace handles the conversion to and from local fiat at each end — sourcing liquidity through local rails, not through slow or expensive correspondent banking chains. The result is settlement that can complete in under a minute during business hours and continues 24/7 through Brazil's Pix instant-payment network.

Products

Trace exposes three core primitives through an API: accounts, conversion, and payments.

Multi-currency accounts can be opened programmatically and hold Brazilian real (BRL), US dollars (USD), and euros (EUR). They carry real-time balances and built-in foreign-exchange capability, making them suitable for fintechs, exchanges, and global platforms that need to hold and move LatAm liquidity without incorporating locally.

The stablecoin on/off-ramp converts between BRL and USDC bidirectionally with sub-minute settlement. Liquidity is sourced through Pix, meaning the pipe is live around the clock including weekends and Brazilian holidays — a meaningful difference from traditional FX desks that close on those days. Conversions use a quote-and-lock mechanism: clients request a rate, Trace locks it, and the swap executes at that price rather than a floating mid-market rate.

The payments layer covers cross-border transactions across more than 15 countries using local rails in each jurisdiction — Pix in Brazil, SPEI in Mexico, ACH in the United States, SEPA in Europe, and other local networks elsewhere. Payments carry full KYC screening on beneficiaries and automated AML monitoring. The API also supports multi-currency treasury management, allowing enterprises to hold and pay out from a single account structure rather than maintaining separate bank relationships in each country.

The platform runs at a stated 99.9% API uptime, supports sandbox and production environments with bearer-token authentication, uses cursor-based pagination for large datasets, and delivers real-time events through a webhook system that covers the full lifecycle of accounts and payment operations.

Market Position

Trace's commercial traction is unusually concrete for a company of its age. By mid-2026 the platform had processed more than $10 billion in institutional cross-border volume and was the primary infrastructure provider for the four largest global payment providers operating in Latin America, including dLocal. Other disclosed clients include Pagseguro, FalconX, Conduit, DolarApp, OKX, Bybit, and Yellowcard — a mix of crypto exchanges, neobrokers, and payment orchestration companies.

Brazil is the anchor market. The country processes roughly $1.8 trillion in foreign-exchange volume annually, has a well-developed Pix network that moves money instantly across more than 700 million accounts, and imposes a licensing framework that creates a meaningful compliance moat for operators who meet its requirements. Trace holds the necessary licenses: an eFX authorization under Brazilian Central Bank Resolution 521 and a VASP registration under Resolution 561. It operates as a banking correspondent in partnership with Central Bank of Brazil-authorized institutions rather than holding a full banking license itself — an approach that keeps regulatory overhead manageable while preserving the compliance credentials that enterprise clients require before routing payment volume.

Beyond Brazil, Trace has active operations in Argentina and Colombia, with Mexico identified as the next priority market and Asia-Pacific earmarked for the Series A expansion phase.

Team

Bernardo Brites (CEO) co-founded Trace after working as Head of Partnerships at Transfero, one of Brazil's first blockchain-native financial services firms. Rafael Luz (COO), his co-founder and former Transfero colleague, ran a trading desk that processed over $500 million in BTC volume before joining Trace. Leone Parise (CTO) was an early member of Trust Wallet before its acquisition by Binance.

The team had grown from 25 to 48 employees by the time of the Series A announcement in June 2026.

Funding and Investors

Trace raised a $4.3 million seed round in February 2022, led by HOF Capital and joined by Circle Ventures, The Chainsmokers' Mantis fund, 2TM (the Mercado Bitcoin holding company), BlockFi Ventures, and angels from Rappi, CoinMarketCap, and Quantstamp. The round was four times oversubscribed with more than 30 investors.

In June 2026, the company closed a $32 million Series A led by CoinFund. Additional investors included Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Crypto, Valor Capital, Paxos, and HOF Capital returning. Angel participation came from Sean Neville (co-founder of Circle), Anatoly Yakovenko (co-founder of Solana Labs), Bam Azizi (co-founder and CEO of Mesh), and Ricardo Villela Marino (partner and vice chairman at Itaú Unibanco). The company disclosed that its valuation had grown tenfold between the seed and Series A rounds. Einar Braathen of CoinFund joined Trace's board as part of the deal.

The Solana Labs connection is more than symbolic: Yakovenko's participation signals ecosystem alignment at the infrastructure layer, where Trace's USDC settlement pathway intersects with Solana's position as the second-largest chain for native USDC supply. Circle, which issues USDC natively on Solana, was an investor from the seed round.

Roadmap

Series A proceeds are allocated to product deepening across FX, bank connectivity, compliance operations, and stablecoin settlement; regulatory expansion in Brazil, the US, APAC, and other priority jurisdictions; and scaled enterprise sales targeting global payment companies and financial institutions entering or expanding within Latin America.