In Dubai, the line didn’t move very fast.
People stood outside a Western Union branch, waiting to collect money that had already been sent. For most, it was routine. For Prabhakar Reddy, this scene he witnessed in his native Dubai was a sign that something deeper was broken.
That moment would later turn into OpenFX, the Miami and New York startup that has just raised a $94 million Series A round backed by Accel, Atomico, Lightspeed Faction, M13, Northzone, and Pantera. Founded in 2024, the company is trying to rebuild how money moves across borders by replacing slow FX settlement with near-instant transfers powered by stablecoins.
Founder and CEO Reddy [pictured above] had already spent years inside financial markets through FalconX, a leading digital asset prime broker. He understood that the real friction wasn’t in sending money, but in settling it at scale.
“You can easily do transfers for anywhere between $1,000 and $100,000 – but the minute you tried to do anything between $1 million and $10 million clip sizes, you eat through the order book,” Reddy said in an interview with Reuters.
That gap is where OpenFX operates.
The company connects traditional banking systems with blockchain-based rails, using stablecoins as a bridge to move capital across currencies in minutes rather than days. According to OpenFX, more than 98% of transactions settle in under an hour, compared to the multi-day timelines that still define much of the FX market.
“There are very few people in the world who are actually willing to pay 2% to 5% to move USD to euro – so that’s when I realized that the infrastructure was broken,” Reddy asserted.
The round values OpenFX at around $500 million, supported by rapid growth from $4 billion to over $45 billion in annualized payment volume, driven by fintechs, remittance providers, and payroll platforms looking for faster alternatives.
“Just as AWS removed the complexity of infrastructure to let developers build at scale, OpenFX is doing the same for money movement. Their global liquidity rails, paired with always-on, real-time settlement, unlock a step change in cross-border financial infrastructure,” Niklas Zennström, founder and CEO of Atomico, said in the startup’s press release.
Stablecoins are starting to move beyond crypto trading into real-world financial infrastructure. Instead of waiting days for settlement, companies can move capital in minutes, then convert into local currency on the other side. That shift is starting to matter more for businesses moving large sums, where delays tie up working capital and introduce risk.
OpenFX is betting that this shift is already underway.
The company, with at least a dozen team members in the Miami area, plans to expand into Southeast Asia and Latin America, where local payment systems are modern, but cross-border flows still lag. In those markets, the gap between how fast money can move domestically and internationally is becoming harder to justify.
The line outside that Western Union branch still exists. The difference is that now, there are companies trying to make sure it doesn’t have to.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- Global startup OpenFX growing from Miami, using stablecoin to speed money transfers
- How Miami became a launchpad for cross-border payment startups
- Palla raises $14.5M to power instant cross-border payments for banks
- Félix is turning WhatsApp into a remittance engine for 400,000+ immigrants
- Majority CEO Magnus Larsson on fintech’s future, #MiamiTech’s growing pains, and why money transfers should be free
- Global Settlement Network raises $11M to rethink how money moves - May 15, 2026
- Albert Santalo is building what comes after vibe coding - May 14, 2026
- Propy and Milo team up so diamond-handed buyers can skip the cash-out - May 13, 2026