# Cyclops raises $20 million Series A led by Nava Ventures for payments-focused stablecoin infrastructure

Research, a Stabledash show. Jul 24, 2026. Alex Wilson.
https://live.stabledash.com/shows/research/episodes/20m-series-a-cyclops-on-stablecoin-settlement-payouts-and-fx-MlAS7-zbMco

Co-founder Alex Wilson says investors who were wary of crypto backed Cyclops because it builds stablecoin rails only for payments companies.

Cyclops, which builds stablecoin infrastructure for payments companies, announced a $20 million Series A on July 15, 2026. Nava Ventures led the round, with Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, F-Prime Capital and GPT Ventures participating. Co-founder Alex Wilson says the company was founded in August 2025, raised its seed in October 2025 and came out of stealth in March 2026.

## Investors who avoid crypto

Alex Wilson says one Nava Ventures partner wrote "crypto" as an allergy on an intake form at a crypto event. He says Nava and GPT Ventures chose Cyclops as their only crypto or stablecoin investment, and probably the only one they make anytime soon, because it focuses on one industry and has a clearer differentiator. Kevin Chenault of Nava has joined the board, and Javier Perez of GBT Ventures, a former Mastercard leader and Adyen seed investor, is involved.

## One integration for payments

Wilson says Cyclops offers one integration that replaces five or six vendor relationships across settlement, payouts, FX, treasury and licensing. The company reports a 300,000-merchant network, 350 percent month-over-month volume growth and 100-plus global licenses. Shift4 Payments is a client, and Cyclops is a member of the Mastercard Crypto Program.

## Weak dollar rails abroad

Alex Wilson says he did not realize how bad US dollar rails are outside the US, pointing to companies in Africa that want access to dollars. Cyclops works with Yellow Card on African flows and sees OpenFX as a strategic partner for FX and treasury management use cases. He calls the banking system not running 24/7 the simple problem stablecoin infrastructure exists to solve.

## The Giving Block playbook

Wilson says Cyclops is running the The Giving Block playbook for a different industry: a vertically integrated product built for one sector, as it was for nonprofits. He cites that company's path to 80 to 90 percent market share as the model, and says Mastercard and Visa covering stablecoins in earnings calls builds credibility.

Cyclops has 30 people and plans to roughly double to about 60 by the end of the year. Wilson puts stablecoin use at about 1% of money moving today, which leaves room for the company to grow if he is right that 5% would make supply and volumes take off.

## Key takeaways

1. Cyclops announced a $20 million Series A led by Nava Ventures, with Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, F-Prime Capital and GPT Ventures participating.
2. Alex Wilson says Nava and GPT Ventures made Cyclops their only crypto or stablecoin investment because it specializes in the payments industry.
3. Wilson estimates about 1% of money moves on stablecoin rails today and expects supply and volumes to take off if a company reaches 5%.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Raising a round while starting a family forces focus
- 3:59 Cyclops closed a $20M Series A after a fast start
- 5:51 FX partners help serve global payments companies' exotic currencies
- 9:14 Skeptical investors backed Cyclops for its payments-only focus
- 15:01 Payment processors want one integration instead of stitched providers
- 18:28 Moving 5% of payments volume would grow stablecoins sharply
- 20:13 Cyclops plans to double its 30-person team this year

## Transcript

**Alex Wilson** (0:16)

What's up, Alex? You. Good to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Good to see you guys. Drew, we were just talking about talking about kids. Sounds like you got another one on the way. I do. I do. Number three. We have a baby boy

**Drew Rogers** (0:28)

this September. And how is life as a as a new dad? You... We were meeting with your other cofounder, and you said you were on your first plane ride with with your daughter. That's always, like Yeah. That's always really anxiety.

**Alex Wilson** (0:42)

There's so much anxiety with the first plane ride. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as we thought it was gonna be. And now, also, she's starting to sleep more. It's it's getting easier all the time. But, yeah, it's been a lot of fun. We're up in Cape Cod for the month with the in laws. So getting a couple extra hands with the baby. Do you recommend raising money in this capacity while, like,

**Drew Rogers** (1:06)

having... Because we're, like, we're thinking about some things, and, you know, I'm, like, eight weeks away from this. I'm like, do we... Is there enough window of time to actually... Like, how how did you approach thinking through the timeline of finishing this round and baby coming? Like, that's a... That's... You got a lot on your plate right now. Yeah. So funny. My my wife always gives me a hard time about this because these things always happen in, like, the same time.

The last time I was on the show in March, we had just announced our seed round. We had just come out of stealth,

**Alex Wilson** (1:34)

and, like, the baby was due, like, any day. She's like, you're sure you wanna come out of stealth? Like, announces right before the baby's about to be born. And then and then, of course, that, you know, time, we weren't actually planning on fundraising, but that's how the series a came together. That's when some of those conversations started in March after after on the show here.

All the inbound pulled forward the timeline for the series a, and my wife's like, are you sure this isn't gonna interfere with the baby being born? And even when we're at the hospital, I was taking some of those initial investor calls and stuff like that. And, I mean, we joke about it a lot. She's she's super supportive about it, though. Nothing will make an investor wanna increase the size of their check than the founder mode in the hospital

**Drew Rogers** (2:14)

while your kid's about to be born. It's like, where do I where do I write? Where do I sign? That's awesome, dude. Well, very notable. And, yeah, it's cool to see... You know, there's definitely this, like, persona or or maybe lie that I think a lot of people believe where it's like, you gotta do all of this ambitious founder stuff before having a family, investing in that part of your life. And, like, the founder life is only available to, like, young, hungry, young twenties. It's like... I I just...

I I think that's so... It's obviously hard in its own way when you do have a family, but

**Zach Fowler** (2:56)

in some ways, it's like It gives you, like, the max skin in the game. Like Yes. Yeah. Like, you have way more to lose when your family is dependent on, like, the nature. And it it forces, like, really ruthless prioritization.

**Alex Wilson** (3:09)

Right? Yes. It's like that Really? It's like that saying too, like, if you want something done, give it to a busy person or or something along those lines. Right? Mhmm. Like, there's just no time for, like, the BS fringe work. It's like you're only working on what actually matters. I think it's a great time to have to work. That's a good way. That's a good way to see it. You know, like, the the work you do to make yourself feel busy.

**Drew Rogers** (3:32)

I struggle so much with shiny object syndrome, but it has been an inch... It's been a really weird result of putting more on your plate and having more. The... As the stakes have risen, it's actually helped shiny objects go away because it's like you don't even have room for them anymore. At least for me, it's felt lately, like, the last six to twelve months, there's no real room for it. And that ruthlessness, I think, is... Yeah. You you you learn to put that on. So, anyway, okay. Let's talk about you.

We got 20,000,000 20 million series a. That's actually not true. It's 38,000,000.

**Alex Wilson** (4:06)

Correct? Or is that true? It's 20. That's right. No. You're getting confused with velocity. It might be my bad. So we had the the 8,000,000 seed and now the 20,000,000

**Drew Rogers** (4:14)

series a. Cool. Don't doubt the the banner.

**Zach Fowler** (4:18)

Strike strike on my end. Oh, don't don't doubt me, Drew. Come on, man.

**Drew Rogers** (4:23)

Tell us about the series a. Yeah.

**Alex Wilson** (4:26)

So I I think an important part about the series a too is just, like, how quickly it all come together too. Like, we we started Cyclops last August. We're, like, less than a year into this. We raised the seed in October, built the entire platform in stealth, came out in March, announced the seed. That announcement basically created the interest in the series a.

We were even days away from signing a smaller strategic round because we thought, like, you know, let's do a seed six months from now, three months from now at least, and just had so much interest and we're... You know, wanted to capture the momentum. And we weren't really in a hurry to do the series a, and we're only gonna do it if we found the right investors, the right partners.

And I think when you guys look at our cap table from the series a, it's very different than maybe some of other names you're you're more used to seeing for crypto and stablecoin companies. Like, we went really heavy on payments investors rather than crypto investors because everything we've been doing is made for payments companies. Right? Not just the product and team, but even the investors.

So if you look at Nava and Kevin Chenault joining our board and GBT Ventures with Javier Perez involved, the former Mastercard leader and a seed investor in Adyen. Like, these are the kind of guys we're we're bringing in, and it looks very different than, you know, let's say, a crypto fund, like, not to pick on anyone, but let's just say, like, a a Dragonfly or multicoin. Right? Yeah. Yeah. This is the right Nava. Right? I'm I'm presenting the right one. I'm aiming to work in the company. Cool. Cool. I am curious.

Could you talk a little bit about OpenFX

**Zach Fowler** (5:51)

being on the cap table? Because they're obviously Yeah. That's back to me too. Castle Island Ventures. I don't think that's a a super common model we've seen with the companies that we've interviewed. What's the impact there, maybe, and what's the relationship with OpenFX?

**Alex Wilson** (6:05)

Yeah. I mean, we we see OpenFX as a strategic partner of ours, and we'll be working with them more and more as we power a lot of sort of FX and treasury management related use cases for the payments companies we work with. So similar to how we'd see, like... Right? We've got, like, Circle and Coinbase on our cap table too. Like, these corporate VCs are are strategic in nature. We work with them or we'll work with them to do a lot more FX.

So whether it's, like, stable point sandwich flows or remittance flows, those types of payout use cases where we're seeing a lot of interest on the FX side. Yeah. So you you talk to me about that. You know, this is a segment focused on the cross border and FX piece. Your positioning yourself specifically as a payments company,

**Zach Fowler** (6:47)

building for payments comp... You know, the payments company... Wait for payments companies. What role does FX play in this? Because I think we were saying earlier, being in The US, we get so trapped in The US centric view of payments. What is the worldwide view of payments, and what do they need in some of some of these flows that, you know, you feel like you're uniquely positioned to to

**Alex Wilson** (7:09)

build for? Yeah. I mean, we're taking a a really global approach with the product because all of our clients are global. Right? When you sign a big payments company, it's rare that they're just operating in one or two countries. They're often operating in 50 countries. So they'll have merchants in The US, but they'll have merchants in LatAm and Africa too. And whether it's a pay in or payout or settlement flow, there's almost always another currency besides just the majors involved. Right?

There's plenty of flows that are dollar and euro denominated, but there's also increasingly a lot of them for these more, let's say, exotic or or less common currencies outside of the majors. And the liquidity for them often isn't that great or the rails aren't that great for that. And something that was really eye opening for me is, you know, another one of our our big partners is Yellow Card for a lot of the the African flows. And it's...

You know, before working with them, I didn't realize how bad the US dollar rails are outside of The US. Maybe that's that's obvious to a lot of people listening now, but if you're a company, maybe a US company operating in Africa, and you want access to US dollars, the local market is pretty bad. Right?

**Zach Fowler** (8:16)

You can often get better dollar liquidity on stablecoin rails than you can through the traditional system, which has been really appealing for a lot of our customers. When you talk about exotic currencies right now, what what are some that stand out that maybe surprised you? Or maybe what are the ones that are just continuing to, you know, to chug along and there are no... Even maybe no surprise at all? What what are some of the top top corridors

**Alex Wilson** (8:40)

for exotic currencies? Yeah. I would say a lot of it has to do with, like, remittance corridors. So, like, if it's a US company, a lot of Mexican pesos back and forth in US dollars, a lot of remittances from South America in general to The US. And then in Europe, we see it more with African currencies.

You see some with Southeast Asia too, like in The Philippines and Indonesia, which, right, it maps to to these corridors where you see a lot of remittances in general, and stablecoins are often just a more efficient way to to service that market.

**Drew Rogers** (9:14)

Is there anything that surprised you just in the in the process of piecing together the cap table, meeting with some of these, like, what sounds like really seasoned and experienced venture partners that have, like, any any any, like, channels of thought or learnings that they've brought to you in the early days that has kind of maybe shaped or molded already the vision for Cyclops as you proceed forward? I mean, I think you... You've brought...

You're bringing so much to the table here, but it sounds like you've been really thoughtful around structuring this cap table and proceeding with the series a in that... Because of that reason so quickly. Any any kind of interesting takeaways or insights

**Alex Wilson** (9:59)

that any of these groups have shared with you in in recent weeks as you've pieced this together? Yeah. I I would say there's still a lot of funds out there and investors that are still very skeptical of of crypto and stablecoins. And we love we love working with the skeptics, honestly. And a lot of the feedback we got from these guys, like a Nava or a GPT, like, they they are... Like, you know, I can even tell you a story about the the Nava guys.

We got reconnected with them actually at a Castle Island event that they had put on, and they sent out a form asking, like, if you're allergic to anything. And one of their partners said crypto, which is hilarious because they were at a crypto event. But that shows you, right, how skeptical some people still are, and they really were looking for the right debt to make in the stablecoin space. And they really just see us as a as a payments and a money movement company. Right?

We just happen to be using stablecoins in a lot of these cases. And in some cases, we just have better fee up rails too. But, you know, I think it's interesting that for both Nava and GPT, for example, we're their only crypto or stablecoin investment they've made and probably the only one they make anytime soon.

And for them, some feedback we got from them is they've looked at a lot of other companies in the market, and they just felt like, you know, so many stablecoin companies are out there, and it's hard to differentiate between them. So what really appealed to them was that we're specializing on a specific industry like payments, where we're gonna be much more focused in our offering and have a much clearer differentiator. So that's a big reason we we decided to work with those guys.

**Zach Fowler** (11:30)

What what did that initial conversation look like with with Nava? Like, how do you start the spillings dispelling some of these these crypto... You know, these crypto myths and to to make them unallergic? I almost think about, like, with my kid. Right? You're like, how do I make her make sure she's not allergic to peanut butter? I start... You guys start giving her, like, just a little spoonful, and then, you know, okay. She's not going in a flat shop. I'll give you all... You know, here you go.

Here's the whole rest of the thing. Like, do you gotta do you gotta do the... You gotta baby feed the the investors too? No. I mean, these guys are all smart. Doing

**Drew Rogers** (11:59)

this in some ways, I'd imagine Yeah. Peanut butter strategy with

**Alex Wilson** (12:04)

Shift4 and giving block and all that. Yeah. I think those conversations are the most fun, honestly. Right? It's like, love convincing people or showing them some data or some use case that they hadn't seen before or come across. But, honestly, I gotta give a lot of credit to the Castle Island guys too on getting the Nava guys more interested in in crypto and stablecoin use cases this event that they went to.

They definitely came out of it, like, just being a bit more informed and seeing some of these other stablecoin companies there, and then they were just trying to figure out the best way to invest in the space. And, really, the, you know, the way they framed it to us was like, okay. They're... They've come around on stablecoins. They understand it. They know why it makes sense. And then it's like, what what use case, what team? And for these guys, they're deep in payments, so we checked all those boxes.

Because a lot of what we're doing is running the giving block playbook, but for a different industry. Right? We we took a very, like, specific industry, like nonprofits with the giving block, built a very vertically integrated product that only made sense for nonprofits. It literally wouldn't work for any other use case because it was so purpose Now we're taking that same approach and applying it to the payments industry and using what we learned spending four years at Shift4.

So we think about it as, like, how do you create, like, a category king or category defining product similar to how the giving block got 80, 90% market share. And we say we're a category king or category leader, and we're trying to do the same thing now with Cyclops.

**Zach Fowler** (13:25)

What what data points... I mean, obviously, if you have... The more granular you could be, the better. I don't... You didn't ask you for this ahead of time. But, like, what are those data points that really start to to raise eyebrows?

**Alex Wilson** (13:36)

I mean, I think it's a combination of stuff like circulating supply of stablecoins going up into the right regardless of what's happening with crypto. Right? So seeing that detachment and really considering them two different things and to see how much money is being moved on stablecoin rails. And then, of course, having just more big names like Visa and Mastercard cover stablecoins in their earnings calls goes a long way to build credibility and and get people comfortable that there's really something there. Right?

Like, major businesses are seeing the impact and the benefits. It's no longer just like a a fringe thing on on crypto Twitter. Right? It's no longer just a trading use case because so many of cryptos and, you know, earliest products are built around trading and investing. And and it's... They still are. Right? Some of the biggest companies in this space. We're we're really just now entering this space

**Zach Fowler** (14:20)

where there's huge companies like BB and K and Bridge getting acquired for billions of dollars that are much more focused on stablecoins than they are investing and trading. Yeah. I I... It's funny. I love the... I don't know if you have the quarter app. Drew kinda put me onto this, but it's cool. You can track keywords that get... And that that get talked about in earnings calls. And, you know, every, you know, every week, there'll be just some...

Some companies you expect, but the the context is then interesting interesting. Then every once in a while, you know, stablecoins, crypto, tokenization will get, you know, popped up into some random earnings call, and you're like, what is this company doing? You know? Okay. Yeah. There's another one. So that's been that's been fun to follow along. Alex

**Drew Rogers** (15:01)

Go to the any, like, early wins slash... I know it's, like, early to even be asking this, but, like, something that we'd love to better understand is who you are speaking with, what clients you are trying to go after, maybe some early small wins of the firm just to help us think through, like, where Cyclops does fit into the the stack here. Any...

Anything you can share around early go to market wins or success so that we can think through helping helping the audience make sense of what you're doing a little bit more tangibly? Yeah.

**Alex Wilson** (15:39)

So in terms of the types of companies, I mean, just payments companies, and what we mean by that is payment processors, gateways, acquirers, orchestrators. So for payment processors, right, like a big customer we have that's public is is Shift4 Payments. So companies like that... But, you know, for networks even like Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Discover, you know, other processors like an Adyen or a Worldpay or a Global Payments. And then, of course, orchestrators like a Spreedly or a UNO or a Gravy.

Like, those are the types of companies we're selling into. And what's really resonating with them is, well, one, of course, that we're built just for payments. So our products are much more ready out of the box for them, but also that we've been able to bring them like a one stop shop solution. So we've realized in these conversations that a lot of them are going through the same pain we went through at shift four where they're like, okay. Let's get an on and off ramp provider. Let's get a wallet provider.

Let's get a wallet linking provider. Let's get, you know, a banking partner. And all of a sudden, they've got four or five different partners. They're stitching together, and they need an engineering team to maintain that and and keep the pieces together. Whereas we say, one, you know, one integration, one contract, one onboarding, we've got it all for you guys.

So it's been great to to get that, you know, positive reception in the market in these conversations because we had a pretty good feeling from our conversations even before we went public that what we experienced at Shift4 was not uncommon. Right? What a lot of these payments companies want and need and are experiencing is is pretty similar. Was there a moment at Shift4 when you

**Drew Rogers** (17:09)

realized... Like, kind kind of the moment... I mean, I know it's hard to get the founder. Once you're a founder, it's hard to, like, be an employee, I would imagine.

**Alex Wilson** (17:17)

But was there a moment where you realized, like... Like, what was was Cyclops and kind of how it has transpired now, was that the plan all along, or was there a moment while you were at shift four where you realized, like, we're actually building this one stop shop right in front of our eyes right here while you were there. Like, what what was that like, and was there a moment where that kind of happened for you? It it definitely wasn't the plan, and it happened in a lot of ways sort of by accident.

We always knew we wanna do something again, a company again. It was more a matter of, like, what's the company? Was it gonna be? When is it gonna be? Honestly, we stuck around for four years, which was much longer than I think we probably expected going into it because we were learning so much. We're having a lot of fun. Like, we really love the team at Shift4 and had an awesome experience there.

It really wasn't in towards, like, the deeper we got into it that it was just so frustrating working with all the other providers in the space, and it just felt so unnecessarily complicated and difficult. And that's when we just essentially said, like, the classic, like, there's gotta be a better way. Right? And then we we honestly started from scratch again to to build this platform.

So we took the learnings, of course, right, from kind of fumbling through it and struggling for four years, but we really started over from scratch to to build this from first principles again.

**Zach Fowler** (18:28)

That's awesome. So cool. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go back here. When you're when you're thinking through, like, what payments companies need right now, especially in this conversation of of FX, are there any specific quarters that feel more broken relative to their volume? Or maybe are... Is there a single corridor that... Or rail that you... Like, if you could snap your finger, you want local time... Local real time payments in.

**Alex Wilson** (18:55)

Is there, like... Are there any discrepancies right now between, like, demand and actual flows? I know you kinda mentioned it with Yellow Card, but I'm wondering if there's any other ones that stick Yeah. I mean, I would say it's it's two things. One is simply, like, the traditional banking system not being twenty four seven. Right? It's that simple, and that flows through to so many different things at a payments company.

And the other piece is just, like, the difficulty of, like, launching these new products at a payments company. Right? Like, you know, I think a lot of people get it wrong that, like, stable points will completely replace certain systems overnight. They're almost always in parallel or complementary rather than, like, a full replacement.

So, you know, you can even think about just getting, like, one, two, three, four, even 5% of of payments companies' volume moving over to stablecoin rails, and that's already a huge amount of volume. Right? It's probably today something like 1% of money moving on the stablecoin rails. So if we can get a company to something like 5%, like, you'll see the the supply of stablecoins and the transaction volumes, like, really take off. And I think we're just scratching the surface still.

It's still so early is what I'm getting at. Like, I think for us, we've been in the space for a long time, so it feels like we've made a lot of progress, and we have. But there's still a long way to go. And that's that's part of what's so exciting about all of this.

**Drew Rogers** (20:13)

It's awesome. Alex, anything we missed? Anything we haven't covered about the raise, the team, the opportunity, your lovely Fortune article that I tried to showcase, but their ad... Their ads are just... You know how it is? It's hard to present things when you go to Fortune sometimes.

**Alex Wilson** (20:37)

Yeah. The link It'll blog. If you don't have the link on their site. Yeah. The blog is pretty detailed. But, also, if you don't have the the fortune article with the the link that takes the payroll off, I can send you that too. But the blog is the most detailed write up we did on the series a, and I and I do have to run a minute. And I guess a good, like, closing note is, like, we're gonna be diarying like crazy. We've got 30 people on the team. We're planning to roughly double the team by the end of the year.

So for anyone watching, check out our careers page on the website. We're hiring for a ton of roles. I'm actually leaving this this interview right now to go start an interview for someone who are thinking about hiring. The most painful hire or, like, the most strategic one that you're like, we gotta fill this? Like, what's the biggest one in your mind right now? It it would be hard to choose one, but I can give you kinda two buckets where we're really focused on... Really three buckets, actually.

So one, of course, is, like, on product and engineering, really scaling up that team. That's roughly half of our head count today. Second bucket bucket is around, like, licensing, regulatory types of roles where we really need to ramp that up. And then third is, like, the broader go to market team. So everything from sales to partnerships to client success to onboarding. But you'll see you'll see roles all across those different teams on the website. So definitely go check it out.

There's quite a few that just went live over the last week or so. But I do have to run because I'm late for this other this other interview I'm supposed to be doing. Go get it. Hey. Hey. I'm crushing it. Enjoy Can't Caught. Yeah. Yeah. Good to see you guys, and appreciate you having me on again.

**Drew Rogers** (21:59)

Thanks, Alex. Good to see you.