Shield — a crypto-native neobank designed for cross-border trade — has secured a $5 million seed round led by Giant Ventures with deep participation from a16z’s crypto accelerator and other strategic backers. The company, which was established in 2022 and pivoted to focus on payments in 2024, wants to make it easy for exporters and importers to pay international invoices using dollar-pegged stablecoins while embedding compliance tools into every transaction.
A payments stack fit for global trade and compliance
Shield calls itself an intermediary of sorts between dollar liquidity in crypto and the realities of international commerce. The platform allows businesses to invoice and settle in U.S. stablecoins; it offers sanctions compliance and AML screening, and also enables conversion into local currencies through a network of banking partners. The firm says that it is registered as a Money Services Business in the U.S. and has EU exchange registration, with an ambitious licensing roadmap to open up further corridors.
For trade operators in Latin America, Africa and some parts of Asia — where dollars can be difficult to obtain at times and wire transfers can take days — stablecoin rails can compress settlement closer to moments instead of business days. Shield is pitching that speed, transparency and compliance can all exist in tandem: KYC during onboarding, continuous checking of transactions and automated checks for sanctions exposure prior to moving funds.
Why stablecoins are growing in B2B cross-border trade
Cross-border B2B payments are still painful and costly. McKinsey calculates that the value of international cross-border flows in such systems globally is over $150 trillion per annum, but many of these are still settled by multi-hop correspondent banks who charge fees and delay payments. While the costs of retail remittances are more visible (World Bank data has it at an average cost for the world well above 3% even if half that of G20 competing countries), B2B payments face similar or higher all-in costs once you factor in FX spreads, compliance reviews and intermediary fees.
Stablecoins solve two pain points at once: the availability of dollars and how long it can take to settle. Transfer volumes of stablecoins have rocketed into the trillions in the last two years, according to analyses by firms like Coin Metrics and Chainalysis — pushed up by treasury, trading and increasingly, commerce use cases. For an exporter who’s withholding goods due to payment, a predictable programmatic dollar rail — when combined with bank-grade compliance — can be meaningfully better than waiting around for that pending wire of uncertain arrival and fees.
Traction, investors and the competitive landscape
Shield says it has processed over $100 million in payments since launching fewer than six months ago, including roughly $40 million in the past month alone. Today, the company says it’s partnered with two main banks and is “in discussions to bring on additional bank partners,” a key step for both on- and off-ramps and local clearing systems in import/export hubs.
The round increases the company’s total funding to $7 million. Strategic angels attached to Coinbase and Bank of America participated alongside Giant Ventures and a16z’s crypto accelerator, highlighting increasing institutional intrigue in compliant stablecoin settlement for businesses. Some of that new money is reserved for licensing expansion, beefing up transaction monitoring and fraud detection capabilities, and growing the compliance team — areas that frequently determine winners in regulated payments.
The market, however, is crowded. Shield is competing against a range of players: traditional cross-border specialists like Wise and Payoneer; global fintechs like Airwallex; and crypto-native payment processors built on stablecoin rails. Incumbents provide wide corridor coverage and bank connectivity; crypto-first entrants rely on faster settlement and programmable workflows. Shield’s distinction is combining near-instant dollar settlement with conservative compliance postures suited to high-risk trade corridors.
Compliance as a feature, not an add-on for trade
Compliance is the product in B2B trade. From the Financial Action Task Force to the European Banking Authority, regulators have called for tighter rules of the road for virtual asset service providers — such as adherence to the Travel Rule and improved risk screening. Shield’s roadmap highlights automated sanctions checks, risk scoring, and even a case management workflow made for auditors. That strategy dovetails with the G20’s cross-border payments agenda: faster, cheaper, more transparent — and safer — global transfers.
There’s also a practical edge. Firms that are in the commodities, manufacturing or wholesale business operate on slim margins and have tough cash cycles. Let’s measure it in the reduction of settlement time from days to minutes — and what effect that can have on working capital and inventory turns. Where compliance can be pre-checked and continuously tracked, counterparties have the confidence to trade more often and in new geographies.
What to watch next as Shield scales cross-border payments
For Shield, the litmus test in the immediate future is depth of corridors: adding banks, supporting local payout methods and showing that we are reliable at greater volumes. The medium-term test is regulatory scale — enforcing the equivalent of a uniform bar while operating in multiple jurisdictions. Successfully executed, Shield could serve to normalize a pattern already observable in patches of the market: B2B invoices denominated in dollars, settled on stablecoin rails and reconciled into local currencies with bank-grade oversight.
With global trade digitizing, even as the relationship it relies on backstops America’s post-World War II strategic alliances, merchants crave dollars that move at internet speed without giving up some of the controls that ensure regulators sleep comfortably. And Shield is betting the combination of stablecoin liquidity and careful compliance is the formula that at long last moves crypto into the mainstream for international business transactions.