Two weeks can make all the difference in timing.
On June 30, the Open Standard consortium—a sprawling coalition of more than 140 players including Visa, Stripe, and BlackRock—unveiled Open USD, a stablecoin initiative that signaled something fundamental shifting in institutional finance. By July 14, London-based Velocity had closed a $38 million Series A, riding what appears to be a swelling wave of confidence that programmable money belongs in the corporate treasury suite.
The company builds infrastructure that lets enterprise CFOs and financial institutions handle stablecoins alongside traditional fiat, threading digital currency rails into the mundane plumbing of corporate payments and settlement. It's a bet that the back office—perhaps the least glamorous corner of finance—is ready for a redesign.
Dragonfly and FirstMark co-led the round. Activant Capital, Capital One Ventures, QED Investors, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, and Ripple joined in. Velocity declined to disclose its valuation, a common move for fintechs navigating choppy public markets and uncertain regulatory terrain.
The raise brings Velocity's total funding to nearly $50 million since it emerged from stealth in May 2025 with a $10 million seed round. That earlier round, announced on May 28, 2025, was led by Activant and drew strategic backing from a who's-who of payments veterans—current and former executives from Stripe, Worldpay, Visa, Circle, PayPal, and Google. Not a bad Rolodex for a startup trying to convince traditional finance that blockchain-based settlement isn't just for crypto enthusiasts anymore.
"Velocity is bridging the gap between legacy payments infrastructure and the stablecoin economy in a way that feels inevitable once you see it," Rob Hadick, general partner at Dragonfly, said in the announcement. Adam Nelson, partner at FirstMark, went further, calling the company's potential "category-defining."
Whether that optimism is warranted remains to be seen. Velocity offers what it describes as a unified API for payments, settlement, and treasury management, handling both fiat and stablecoins through a single interface. The pitch: real-time cross-border settlement that doesn't sleep when banks do. Weekends, holidays, 3 a.m. on a Tuesday—it doesn't matter. And the platform integrates with the ERP and treasury management systems CFOs already use, sidestepping the need for wholesale operational overhauls.
Security and compliance are table stakes in this game. Velocity has earned SOC 2 Type I certification and aligned its controls with ISO 27001 standards. Custody runs through regulated partners—Zodia Custody, backed by Standard Chartered, Northern Trust, and SBI, among others. Fireblocks handles the institutional wallet infrastructure and governance layer.
The company operates in the U.S., parts of Europe, and Australia, though Fortune reported on July 14 that expansion into Africa and Latin America is on the roadmap, pending the necessary licenses. (Regulatory approvals in emerging markets can be labyrinthine, so timelines are anyone's guess.)
Velocity plans to use the new capital to expand its global banking and payments network, accelerate product development, and—crucially—deepen its regulatory capabilities. That last piece matters. As stablecoin frameworks take shape in major jurisdictions, companies like Velocity will need to stay nimble, adjusting to rules that haven't fully crystallized yet.
"Stablecoins are becoming core infrastructure" for corporate finance teams, Eric Queathem, Velocity's founder and CEO, wrote in the Series A announcement. Queathem worked at Worldpay, where he led corporate strategy and launched initiatives around crypto and global payouts. He co-founded Velocity in 2025 with Tom Greenwood, who previously worked at Volt and IFX. As of mid-2026, Velocity's website lists Queathem as Founder & CEO; Greenwood's current role wasn't specified in the Series A materials, a curious omission given his co-founder status.
The company hasn't named customers publicly, citing only that it serves global merchants, payment providers, fintechs, and financial institutions. That vagueness is typical for enterprise-focused startups still building their client roster, though it makes evaluating real-world traction harder for outsiders.
Velocity isn't alone in chasing this opportunity. BVNK, a competitor, announced a partnership with Corpay in May to add stablecoin wallet capabilities for global customers. And the institutional drumbeat has grown louder in recent weeks. BNY Mellon expanded its relationship with Circle on June 29, adding custody and mint-and-burn capabilities for stablecoin services. Reports surfaced the same week, per Bloomberg Law, of tighter U.S.-UK coordination on stablecoin regulatory frameworks.
The Open USD announcement looms large in this context. When Visa, Mastercard, and BlackRock align around a shared stablecoin standard, it suggests the experiment has moved from fringe to mainstream—or at least to the cusp of it.
Velocity differentiates itself, the company says, by targeting CFOs and treasury professionals rather than crypto-native users. It's a subtle but meaningful distinction. The former group cares about audit trails, compliance, and integration with legacy systems. The latter might tolerate clunkier interfaces in exchange for decentralization or yield farming opportunities. Velocity is betting the real money—corporate treasuries managing billions—sits with the buttoned-up crowd.
Still, questions linger. Stablecoins remain subject to evolving regulations, and the infrastructure Velocity is building could face disruption from central bank digital currencies or incumbent financial institutions launching their own blockchain-based settlement systems. The window of opportunity might be wide now, but it won't stay that way forever.
For the moment, though, the winds seem favorable. Institutional players are leaning in. Regulators are sketching frameworks rather than issuing blanket bans. And Velocity just landed enough capital to make a serious run at the space.
Whether CFOs embrace stablecoins as enthusiastically as their tech-forward peers remains the open question. But Velocity is placing its chips on the table, and the Series A suggests investors think the odds are better than even.
