KAST recently raised US$10 million in seed funding, and the funds will be used to accelerate licensing and international expansion.
KAST, a financial-technology platform built on stablecoins, has raised US$10 million in seed funding. The round is led by HongShan Capital Group (HSG) and Peak XV Partners, with a number of high-profile angel investors and partners.
The project offers payment cards and USD-denominated accounts to over 150 countries while working with partners like Bridge. KAST will soon launch savings and other remittance products without having to interact fiat directly.
KAST highlighted use cases such as holding USD stablecoins as an alternative to volatile currencies, enabling people to buy imports and travel with a card, plus allowing remote workers globally to get paid.
“For most countries and over half of global GDP, banking does not match the openness and speed of the internet, it’s fundamentally broken. Stablecoins are the clear solution, but the user experience wasn’t great. We are building KAST to change this”, said Raagulan Pathy, KAST’s Co-Founder.
Stablecoins have experienced a surge in growth, with over US$170 billion in supply and US$8.5 trillion
transaction volume in Q2 2024 by over 125 million users. Analysts predict that by 2030, user numbers will exceed 1 billion, with supply surpassing US$1 trillion.
“The next generation of neobanks will be built on stablecoins and inherently global by DNA. They will
differ fundamentally from the current generation of neobanks, which are limited in countries due to
licensing, and struggle in integrating blockchain; their core systems and capabilities are just too different,” said Daniel Bertoli, co-founder of KAST and former Partner at Quona Capital.
