We recently led Noah's $16M seed extension, bringing its total seed funding to $38M. Noah is building infrastructure for the next era of cross-border flows, where money moves from a local account in one country to a local account in another – instantly, 24/7, through a single API.
Understanding how money moves across borders has always been part of our fintech focus, and with the new opportunities stablecoin technology creates, Noah stands out as the strongest team building the infrastructure behind these flows. Here are five reasons we invested:
For decades, cross-border payments have run on correspondent banking: a chain of banks holding accounts with one another, with every step adding time and cost. The industry has spent years optimising that chain, and it’s closing in on its practical ceiling.
Stablecoins offer an alternative to this legacy system. A stablecoin is a digital dollar or euro, backed 1-to-1 by cash and short-term government bonds. Money is converted into stablecoins, skips the chain of correspondent banks, and arrives at the other end not only paid but settled instantly in local currency. Every payment is tracked on a transparent ledger, and available around the clock.
Stablecoins already win on the less-used payment routes, where banks are slowest and most expensive. On the busiest routes, the cost of converting money in and out of stablecoins still eats most of the advantage. As that cost comes down, we expect stablecoins to overtake banks there too.
Cross-border payments moved an estimated $208 trillion in 2025 (FXC Intelligence). The easiest way to see the stablecoin opportunity is remittances: people sending money home to family, often on routes where banks are slowest and most expensive. Western Union picked Noah to power its new stablecoin payout service across more than 200 countries and territories.
Payroll has the same problem: paying workers abroad. Global payroll platform Deel has partnered with Noah to solve this.
Another opportunity is global treasury. Businesses that pay and get paid abroad keep cash parked in local accounts in every country to pay out on time, then have to move what they collect back home. With Noah’s API, money moves instantly in both directions, which frees up capital and simplifies operations for CFOs.
In regulated money movement, execution plays a big role. Noah is led by a founding team that has scaled global businesses before: CEO Shah Ramezani, who previously led The Hut Group’s Asia division, and President Thijn Lamers, who spent a decade on Adyen’s founding team helping scale it into a global payments giant.
They are applying that same enterprise playbook to stablecoin infrastructure, and it shows. Noah has built up more than 40 licences, registrations and approvals, including MiCA and PSD2 licences covering all 27 EU member states, money transmitter licences in the US and a registration in Canada. Year-to-date revenue is up 538% on last year and still compounding 31% month on month, and Noah has signed more than 150 new customers this year across remittances, fintech, marketplaces and payroll.
Businesses sell, hire and source across borders as a matter of course. Freelancers in one country work for companies in another. Platforms pay out to users in dozens of markets every day.
Yet sending money abroad can still take days and cost several percent. Expectations have moved on: a payment should travel as easily as a WhatsApp message. That gap between what businesses expect and what the current system delivers is where Noah comes in. A payment that used to hop between several banks over several days now arrives in minutes.
Global payments are local everywhere. Every market has its own rails: SEPA in Europe, Pix in Brazil and UPI in India, each with its own rules and its own way of working. Building a global network means connecting to each of them.
Noah plugs into platforms and gives them local payment methods across the world, powered by stablecoin rails on the back end. Its network is live in more than 150 markets and handles more than 60 currencies.
This is the core of our thesis: global payments require local depth. Noah has built the local payment endpoints and connects them through stablecoin rails, making global money movement easily accessible to businesses through one universal API. Underpinned by a compliance-first approach and an exceptionally strong team.
Cross-border flows are moving from a chain of intermediaries to an open, always-on network. We believe Noah will be one of the companies building enterprise access to this innovation. That’s why we chose to lead this extension round.
If you are building at the intersection of stablecoins, payments and/or regulated financial infrastructure, I'd love to hear from you: maarten@endeit.com
Let's set money free.
