Top Insights
The Big Five
Mercury
$200M Series D (United States)
Mercury raised $200 million in a Series D at a $5.2B valuation, led by TCV, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, CRV, Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital. The San Francisco-based company provides banking and financial software for startups and small businesses through partner banks, with more than 300,000 companies as customers, including startups and larger entities such as Supabase, ElevenLabs, Lovable, Linear, Phantom and Tempo. The round brings total primary and secondary funding to approximately $700 million. Capital will support continued expansion of its AI product set, including Mercury Insights and developer tools such as its Model Context Protocol integration and command-line interface.
Primer
$100M Series C (United Kingdom)
Primer closed a $100 million Series C funding round led by Sofina, with Peak XV Partners joining as a new investor, alongside continued participation from all existing backers, including Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest.
The London-based payments infrastructure platform unifies checkout, payment service providers, fraud prevention, and reconciliation into a single layer for enterprise merchants. The startup launched an AI agent in November last year called Primer Companion that understands the context of a merchant's payment ecosystem allowing users to receive recommendations, ask questions and have approved changes automatically implemented.
The raise brings Primer's total funding to $170m. Proceeds will be directed towards accelerating the company's AI capabilities and fuelling its expansion across the United States, where Primer intends to grow its share of total revenue to more than one third of the business by 2028.
Fasset
$51M Series B (United States / Global)
Fasset closed a $51 million Series B round supported by SBI Group, Investcorp, and Turkish investment management firm Arz Portföy, in addition to a number of undisclosed company partners.
The Los Angeles-headquartered, Dubai-operating stablecoin neobank serves emerging markets across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. It holds regulatory approvals across the UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, the EU, Türkiye, Pakistan and several additional jurisdictions and currently processes more than $32bn in annualised transaction volume, supporting over two million wallets spanning 125 countries and in excess of 1,000 SME clients worldwide.
The Series B round also included Turkish asset manager Arz Portföy and will fund new market entry, lending products, and Own Network infrastructure.
Exponent
$40M Series A + Credit (United States)
Exponent raised more than $40 million in combined equity and credit capital, anchored by a $7.5 million Series A equity investment led by Chailease, the multinational asset-backed finance institution founded in 1977 and one of the largest non-bank lenders in Asia, and Andre Koo, the Chairman of Chailease, with co-lead participation from Era, Inauguration Capital, K8 Capital, Inauguration Capital, and NBA player Kyle Kuzma.
The New York-based platform builds capital, expense management, charge cards, and AI-powered accounting tools for multi-location franchise operators. Major QSRs that have partnered with Exponent include Burger King, Baskin-Robbins, and Del Taco.
The financing also includes more than $30 million in committed credit facilities supporting Exponent's lending products, including a previously announced $20 million revolving credit facility from Jovian Capital Management. Capital will fund new hires and onboard additional brands.
equipifi
$34M Series B (United States)
equipifi closed a $34 million Series B funding round led by Left Lane Capital, with all existing investors returning to participate, including Curql and PHX Ventures, bringing total funding to $49 million. The Scottsdale-based platform enables banks and credit unions to embed buy now, pay later capabilities natively into their digital banking products.
The company's client base currently includes Suffolk Credit Union, Orsa Credit Union, and Credit Union of Texas. The company intends to use the funds to expand its financial institution partnerships, deepen its core product capabilities, and double its overall headcount with a focus on product and engineering roles.
Startups on the Radar
Stitch – $25M Series A (Saudi Arabia)
Saudi fintech Stitch raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, marking the venture firm’s first investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, with participation from existing investors Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures, and SVC.
The Riyadh-based company provides a cloud-native operating system for financial institutions, spanning lending, cards, payments, and ledger infrastructure. Stitch claims to have processed more than $5 billion in transactions over the last six months, while customer numbers grew 10x in 2025, with clients including Raya Financing, LuLu Exchange, Noqodi, and Foodics.
The raise brings Stitch’s total funding to $35 million. The funding will support product development, regional expansion across MENA, and global go-to-market growth.
RemotePass – $17.4M Series B (United Arab Emirates)
RemotePass secured $17.4 million in a Series B funding round led by EBRD Venture Capital, with participation from 500 Global and existing backers Oraseya Capital, 212 VC, Access Bridge Ventures, and Khwarizmi Ventures. The Dubai-headquartered platform provides global employment, payroll, and contractor management services, with a fintech layer offering workers USD accounts, global cards, and health insurance.
RemotePass serves more than 35,000 workers across 150+ countries and has processed over $800 million in cross-border payroll, with customers including Logitech, Tata Group, InDrive, and Careem. The capital will be deployed to broaden RemotePass’s commercial presence across Europe and the US, strengthen its financial infrastructure product for distributed teams, and push forward its artificial intelligence roadmap.
Aryze – €3M Pre-Series A (Denmark)
Aryze completed a €3 million pre-Series A round to scale its stablecoin technology infrastructure for licensed issuers.
The capital will be directed towards continued development of Aryze’s stablecoin infrastructure stack, which brings together stablecoin issuance and bank-to-bank fiat on- and off-ramp capabilities under a unified platform, targeting licensed issuers of stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets.
The offering is designed specifically for licensed issuers of both stablecoins and tokenised RWAs, with builders accessing the infrastructure through a self-serve layer under their own or partner licences while banks and regulated institutions use the platform as a managed service.
The week reinforced three patterns.
AI is moving into the operating core of payments and business banking, with Mercury and Primer both directing growth-stage capital toward agentic and embedded AI products.
Stablecoin rails are attracting capital across the maturity curve, from Fasset’s $51M Series B at the scale end to Aryze’s €3M pre-Series A at the infrastructure layer.
Workforce and operator-focused financial platforms – RemotePass for distributed teams, Exponent for franchise operators, equipifi for credit unions – are pulling institutional checks as fintech moves deeper into vertical workflows.
This digest is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
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