Stablecoins are crossing the chasm from a crypto trading primitive to real-world financial infrastructure. What began as a better way to move dollars inside crypto is rapidly evolving into a new set of global rails: programmable, instant, and borderless. 

Why now? We believe several important forces are converging at once: regulation is maturing, mainstream demand is accelerating, and the underlying technology has become dramatically more reliable. Together, these shifts are driving adoption at an unprecedented scale. Stablecoins are already approaching ~$300B in circulation, with ample room to grow by an order of magnitude based on existing demand alone. This isn’t just tech exuberance; the US Secretary of the Treasury expects stablecoin issuance to reach $3T by the end of the decade. The advantages, which include faster settlement, predictable liquidity, and transparent routing, are increasingly difficult for traditional infrastructure to match, drawing in not only crypto-native builders, but also established leaders in fintech and payments. 

Global payments is one of the largest and most durable markets in technology. The best networks have compounded for decades. And yet, despite creating over $1T+ in market value, the incumbents remain rooted in pre-internet architecture. At FirstMark, we believe the next era belongs to networks built natively for the programmable economy. As money becomes tokenized – and stablecoins emerge as the most efficient way to access dollar liquidity globally – every institution, everywhere, will modernize how it transacts. 

That’s why we are excited to announce that FirstMark has invested in Rain’s Series C. 

Rain sits at the intersection of powerful tailwinds: a multi-trillion dollar market with proven network effects, a product advantage grounded in differentiated infrastructure, and a clear path for scale. Rain is building the tokenized money core for this future: a full-stack tokenized payments platform spanning card issuance, rewards, wallets, money movement orchestration, on- and off-ramps, and settlement – all through a single platform. It integrates seamlessly with existing card networks while removing the friction that has historically made global money movement slow, expensive, and operationally complex. And importantly, Rain is already moving billions in annualized volume today (growing 38x in the past year alone) for over 200 partners across both the crypto and traditional financial services ecosystem.

We first met Farooq and Charles in 2023, and it was immediately clear that this team brings the rare combination of regulatory, technical, and domain expertise that this market demands. Under their leadership, Rain has built out an omni-chain settlement infrastructure supporting stablecoins across multiple networks (including 365-day settlement and tokenized credit), secured Visa Principal Membership, and processed volume across 100+ countries. 

Today, Rain is the leading institutional-grade platform for fiat and stablecoin payment programs, supporting leading crypto and financial services brands, including Western Union, Nuvei, Avalanche, ether.fi, and more. Through a single API, Rain provides global USD account infrastructure powered by stablecoins – one of the fastest and most secure ways for platforms to embed stablecoin utility into their roadmaps. Rain’s proprietary blockchain authorization and settlement engine enables stablecoin settlement directly from user balances to the card network, with 100% of payment volume on-chain directly with Visa and last-mile partners.

The feedback from customers has been exceptional and underscores the scale and importance of what Rain is building: 

• First-mover advantage in stablecoin-native issuing and settlement, including real-time settlement with Visa and long-needed cash off-ramps 
• Deep technical differentiation and full-stack ownership, supporting instant, full-chain settlement across expansive corridors – enabled by both the requisite licenses and advanced infrastructure
• Exceptional execution and ecosystem momentum, with rapid time to value
• Durable, high-quality revenue with low displacement risk, while unlocking new revenue streams for customers – eliminating pre-funding, enabling interchange and yield capture, and expanding margins with minimal incremental cost 

We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Farooq, Charles, and the amazing team at Rain as they continue to expand into new use cases and markets, and for what’s ahead. We believe Rain has the potential to become an entirely new financial network for the new economy – and the default infrastructure layer as money shifts from legacy rails to tokenized dollars.