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Fintechs are increasingly adopting stablecoins—an immutable type of cryptocurrency often pegged to the US dollar. When it comes to payments and money transfers, stablecoins offer clear advantages but developing the infrastructure to support them can be slow and expensive. This is where Levl wants to fill the gap. The startup aims to create a platform where digital wallets and other fintechs can send money around the world using stablecoins.
Levl announced on Wednesday that it has raised $7 million in a seed round led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Protagonist, Deus XBlockchain Builders Fund, and other investors. Jaisel Sandhu, the founder and CEO of Levl, declined to disclose the company’s valuation in an interview with Good luck.
“Instead of fintech rebuilding their internal pipelines, we can remove all the complexity of trying to connect traditional payment systems with digital assets,” said Sandhu. “They can get all the efficiencies of stablecoins without having to deal with building all that in-house infrastructure.”
Levl’s clients are digital wallets, neobanks, and other fintechs. These companies typically use Levl as an infrastructure platform for their remittance or business payment business. Two of its clients are TerraPay, a business-to-business payment provider, and Taptap Send, an international payment company. Levl says it currently has more than 20 clients.
The startup sees its competition primarily as big banks, where remittances and business payment business traditionally take place. Sandhu says that with Levl’s platform, money can be transferred quickly and at a lower price than through these legacy systems. He says there are other stablecoin providers that are more regionally focused but less global in scope than Levl.
“We are one of the few native stablecoin providers that can make payments in Mexico and the Philippines through the same API that you can plug in in a couple of days,” he said.
Like many other founders in the crypto startup space, Sandhu began his career in the world of traditional finance. He worked for several years at AQR, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, where he traded equities and foreign exchange. There, he noticed that the exchange rates he was seeing on his Bloomberg terminal were different from what he was seeing on the consumer app on his phone. That became the inspiration for Levl, which he believes will level the playing field for remittances for consumers and businesses.
The platform was launched in August and has an annual transaction volume of over $1 billion. Sandhu said the startup generates revenue through transaction fees but did not disclose specific numbers.
With the new capital, Levl plans to double its headcount from 18 employees to about 36. It also plans to expand its services in Latin America and Africa.
