Fintech Huma, a self-described PayFi network, has raised $38 million in funding. Distributed Global led the equity round, with participation from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, the Stellar Development Foundation, and TIBAS Ventures, CVC arm of İşbank, the largest private bank in Turkiey. Part of this raise came as investments into high-yield real-world assets (RWA) assets on the platform.
Credit cards finance $16 trillion in global merchant payments. Trade finance facilitates $10 trillion in B2B payments. Huma said one in every six families depends on remittances—money sent back home across the borders—yet even that system depends on trillions of dollars being locked in pre-funding accounts.
PayFi aims to address this liquidity gap by bringing trillions of dollars of real-world payment volume to blockchains and stablecoins. Leveraging the core strengths of blockchain—global money movement in seconds through programmable money—Huma said PayFi also enables new real-world use cases that were previously impossible.
“While designing Huma, we often asked ourselves: How do you build an open payment financing network on blockchain that is more powerful than Visa?” Huma co-founder Richard Liu said. “Today, stablecoins are already powering $2 trillion in payments annually. An open payment financing network is going to help grow the entire payment ecosystem faster.
“The surge of interest we’re seeing right now is a testament to PayFi’s potential. As more partners join us every week, it’s clear that PayFi is quickly becoming the new frontier of RWA.”
In April, Huma merged with Arf, an on-demand liquidity solution for global payments. Together they have surpassed $1.8 billion in payment financing transactions and are on track to reach $10 billion next year, making them one of the fastest-growing use cases for Circle’s USDC.
Part of this raise came as investments into Arf’s high-yield RWA assets. The Stellar Development Foundation provided a $10 million investment. Additionally, tokenized assets are currently available to accredited investors on Scroll for a limited period. With this funding infusion, Huma plans to further expand its PayFi network to the Stellar smart contract platform and to Solana in the coming months, making sure the network is accessible from all the major payments-focused chains.
“Moving money quickly and cheaply across borders is at the core of what the Stellar network does best,” said Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon. “PayFi is providing a real-world utility that solves problems for people and companies, and it is the type of project tailor-made for the Stellar network.”
Huma believes the Solana Foundation’s support signals how PayFi’s innovative on-chain financial solutions are set to redefine global finance.
“PayFi is the creation of new financial markets around the time value of money. On-chain finance can enable new financial primitives, product experiences, and financial access that are impossible in traditional or even Web2 finance,” said Lily Liu, president of Solana Foundation.