Latitude Raises $35M to Bring Stablecoins to Local Payments

A driver in London hands a bag of cash to a middleman so his wages can reach family in Morocco. After a 20% cut, whatever is left finally arrives. That single exchange, witnessed years ago by an Uber payments executive, ended up shaping a company now betting $35 million that stablecoins local payments can replace exactly that kind of informal, costly remittance chain.

The company is Latitude, founded by former Stripe and Uber employees who spent years watching cross-border payments fail ordinary people at the last mile. According to Fortune, which first reported the funding round, Latitude has now raised $35 million to build infrastructure that turns stablecoins into money people can actually spend where they live.

Key takeaways

• Latitude, founded by alumni of Stripe and Uber, has raised $35 million to build stablecoin-based local payment infrastructure.
• The startup’s 15-person team operates out of shared offices in New York, San Francisco, and London.
• Latitude already holds licenses across 45 U.S. markets and plans to pursue direct regulatory licenses in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
• Funding will go toward hiring in compliance, engineering, legal, and sales.
• Clients include neobanks, payroll platforms, marketplaces, and financial firms moving money across borders.

Latitude’s Vision and Founding Team

Latitude was built by people who had already tried to solve this problem from inside two of the biggest payments companies in the world, and watched where those efforts fell short. The founder, identified as Mathew, spent roughly a decade in Europe leading international payments at Uber, an experience that put him face-to-face with workers sending money home through informal, expensive channels.

That London encounter with the Uber driver remitting cash to Morocco became a formative moment. It illustrated, in blunt terms, how much value gets lost when there’s no reliable digital bridge between where money is earned and where it needs to be spent.

Mathew later joined Stripe, where his team rolled out stablecoin payouts across 100 countries. The rollout proved that moving digital dollars globally was technically possible. What it didn’t prove was that people wanted to hold onto stablecoins once they received them.

Funding and Company Growth

Latitude’s $35 million raise is meant to fund the unglamorous but essential work of turning a payments idea into a regulated, scalable business. The company has grown to a 15-person team since its founders began raising a seed round in January 2025, with shared office space in New York, San Francisco, and London.

In late 2024, while stepping back from the industry to weigh his next move, Mathew pitched the Latitude concept to two former Stripe colleagues, identified as Wrightson and Morzaria. Within months, the three co-founders were raising capital together.

That capital now has a specific job. Latitude plans to put the new funding toward hiring across compliance, engineering, legal, and sales — the four functions that determine whether a fintech handling cross-border money can actually operate at scale without running into regulatory trouble.

Stablecoin Adoption Challenges and Latitude’s Solution

Stablecoins move fast and cheaply across borders, but that speed means little if the person receiving them can’t spend the money. This gap between technical capability and everyday usability is exactly what limited adoption of Stripe’s earlier payout rollout, and it’s the problem Latitude was built to fix.

Users in markets including Vietnam and several countries across Africa told Mathew’s team they needed money they could spend locally, not digital tokens sitting in a wallet. Many also resisted downloading crypto wallets and managing seed phrases, a friction point that has quietly stalled broader stablecoin adoption in emerging markets.

That feedback led to a simple but important realization: stablecoins would have limited real-world use unless recipients could convert them easily into local currency, whether that meant a bank account or a familiar digital wallet. Latitude’s core product is essentially built around removing that conversion friction, positioning the company as a layer that makes stablecoins local payments practical rather than theoretical.

Regulatory Strategy and Market Expansion

Regulation, not technology, is often the real bottleneck for stablecoin companies trying to operate across borders — and Latitude is leaning into that reality rather than avoiding it. The company currently maintains licenses across 45 U.S. markets and intends to keep that coverage while pursuing direct licensing internationally.

Oivind Lorentzen, a partner at Oak HC/FT, framed the licensing strategy as a trust signal for large enterprise clients. “When you talk to these large enterprises, they want to work with players that are regulated in the U.S. because it provides a level of certainty and trust,” Lorentzen told Fortune. “That’s really important when you’re moving money.”

Latitude’s international ambitions extend well beyond the U.S. The company is aiming to obtain its own regulatory licenses in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa — regions where, according to Mathew, many stablecoin companies have yet to establish a real regulatory presence. That gap represents both an opportunity and a signal of how early this market still is.

Why regulated stablecoin solutions matter for enterprises

Enterprises and neobanks weighing whether to build in-house crypto infrastructure or plug into a third party tend to favor whoever can prove regulatory legitimacy first. Mathew put it directly: “There’s a number of neobanks that are trying to build financial services apps for users across the world. Those end users need ways to get in and out of stablecoins. That neobank can try to do that in 80 countries, or they can plug into Latitude.”

Client Base and Use Cases

Beyond neobanks, Latitude’s client list points to how broad the demand for cross-border stablecoin conversion has become. The company serves payroll platforms, marketplaces, and financial firms that need to move money across borders reliably and within regulatory bounds.

Each of those client categories represents a different pressure point in global finance: payroll platforms need to pay distributed workforces without losing value to intermediaries, marketplaces need to settle with sellers in dozens of currencies, and financial firms need compliant rails they can plug into rather than build from scratch. Latitude is positioning itself as the connective layer for all three, betting that regulated stablecoin solutions will become the default choice as more institutions look to move money globally without taking on unnecessary regulatory risk.

FAQ

Who founded Latitude and what experience do they have?

Latitude was founded by former employees of Stripe and Uber with deep experience in cross-border payments, including leading international payments work at Uber and building stablecoin payout systems at Stripe.

What problem is Latitude solving with stablecoins?

Latitude aims to simplify the conversion of stablecoins into local currencies, since adoption had been limited by the difficulty of spending stablecoins locally and the complexity of managing crypto wallets.

How does Latitude plan to expand internationally?

Latitude plans to obtain its own regulatory licenses in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa to expand beyond its current base of 45 U.S. markets.

What are Latitude’s target customers?

Latitude targets enterprises, neobanks, payroll platforms, marketplaces, and financial firms that need regulated infrastructure for moving money across borders using stablecoins.

Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.