Tech
Tether backs stablecoin liquidity provider Mansa in $10M seed round
As payment companies increasingly explore stablecoins for cross-border payments and real-time settlement, some startups are tapping into the zeitgeist by providing liquidity via a revolving line of credit in stablecoins.
One of them is Dubai-based Mansa, whose offering allows payments companies, mainly in Africa to date, to settle transactions and fund customer accounts instantly. The startup has raised $10 million in seed funding including both equity and debt. Stablecoin provider Tether led the $3 million equity investment.
The funds will support the company’s expansion into Latin America and Southeast Asia, regions where liquidity challenges also limit cross-border transactions.
Mansa says its model improves clients’ cash flow at a lower cost than fiat alternatives, positioning it as a key player in the future of payments. Its co-founders, CEO Mouloukou Sanoh and COO Nkiru Uwaje, bring several years of expertise in finance, payments and web3.
Sanoh, an investor in several African fintechs, previously worked at web3 VC firm Adaverse. Uwaje was an innovation manager at SWIFT and led blockchain strategy for Dell in the U.K. and Ireland.
Cross-border payments are crucial to global commerce, but many payment providers face liquidity shortages, leading to delayed settlements and higher operational costs, especially in emerging markets. Remittance costs average 6.5% globally, disproportionately affecting developing regions. With cross-border payments expected to reach $290.2 trillion annually by 2030, inefficiencies in the current system could cost businesses billions.
Mansa says it addresses this by offering fast, flexible embedded pre-funding solutions, completing due diligence in under a month. And unlike traditional lenders, it underwrites loans based on real-time transaction data rather than collateral while sourcing liquidity at scale through decentralized finance (DeFi). It aggregates capital from DeFi platforms, quant funds, family offices, and hedge funds.
For its seed round, Mansa secured $7 million in liquidity from some of these institutions. Meanwhile, other investors that participated in the equity round alongside Tether include Faculty Group, Octerra Capital, Polymorphic Capital, and Trive Digital.
“Payments are moving on chain, but in order for payments to move on chain you need to have the on-chain liquidity to be able to settle instantly,” Sanoh told TechCrunch. “That is why our partnership with Tether is so consequential and why we’re working very closely together to make it the primary stablecoin in emerging markets.”
Despite USDC’s rapid growth last year, the founders said Mansa is bullish on Tether’s USDT due to its broad accessibility, usage flexibility, and market dominance, which continues to expand alongside rising on-chain payment activity, especially in emerging markets.
It also makes sense that Mansa’s customers are not based in Europe, where Tether and nine other digital assets were recently delisted from EU-regulated platforms for not meeting MiCA compliance standards. Tether still holds 70% of the market share, in terms of trading volume, among stablecoins globally.
Still, from a compliance perspective, Mansa says it’s focused on regulatory adherence. The fintech recently hired the former head of HSBC North Asia and the chief legal officer of Franklin Templeton to strengthen its regulatory oversight.
Similarly, the stablecoin liquidity platform says it’s building robust risk frameworks for liquidity and payments, ensuring compliance with AML checks, sanction screening, KYC (Know Your Customer), KYB (Know Your Business), active transaction monitoring, and blockchain analytics tools. “We’re building a fintech, and we approach everything with that mindset,” Nkiru stressed.
Meanwhile, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the stablecoin provider is “proud to collaborate with Mansa and support their efforts to reshape global payment infrastructure.”
So far, Mansa has disbursed over $18 million in payments financed to its clients, with access to over $200 million in liquidity through its partner network. The fintech claims it doesn’t have any defaults so far.
Similarly, its transaction volume has surged since launching six months ago, from $1.6 million last August to $11 million in January, compounding at a monthly growth rate of 37.5%. It has processed nearly $31 million in that period. The company expects to reach a $1 billion total payment volume (TPV) run rate this year, up from its current $240 million run rate, Sanoh disclosed.
The two-year-old fintech serves a broad range of clients, including B2B payment platforms, virtual card providers, stablecoin infrastructure, forex platforms, and remittance companies operating in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
These clients have reported a 30% increase in transaction volumes and a 10% revenue boost since onboarding, the fintech said. Meanwhile, Mansa’s own revenues — generated from fees on financed transactions — have grown 350% in the past six months.
Lending is Mansa’s starting point. But there’s more it wants to do, according to Sanoh. “We’re starting by being the primary liquidity provider to the biggest payment companies across emerging markets,” CEO Sanoh explained.
“From there, we can handle payouts and also offer additional services like foreign exchange. The goal is to create a one-stop payment platform where they can finance their payments, settle transactions instantly, and access foreign currency seamlessly — all in one place,” said the CEO, adding that it’s an evolution that could see it become an on-chain version of Stripe.
Tech
Revolut eyes valuation of up to $200B in eventual IPO
British neobank Revolut seems to be eyeing a major valuation bump when it eventually goes public. The company is targeting a market cap between $150 billion and $200 billion in an initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous investor sources.
The fintech giant, which secured a full banking license in the United Kingdom in March after years of waiting, was most recently valued at $75 billion, up from $45 billion in 2024, in a secondary share sale that made it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies.
Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky, last week said that the company’s IPO was at least “two years away,” according to Bloomberg.
According to PitchBook and the Financial Times, the company is working on another secondary share sale, scheduled for the second half of 2026, that would value it at more than $100 billion.
As of November 2025, the company had raised a total of $5.89 billion, according to PitchBook. Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion in the financial year ended December 31, 2025, up from $4 billion in 2024. The company’s net profit grew to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion in 2024, and counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.
Revolut declined to comment.
Founded in 2015, Revolut offers a range of services spanning multi-currency accounts, payment and transfer services, crypto products, insurance, and more. The neobank has been pouring truckloads of cash into expanding its operations internationally, and recently applied for a banking license in the United States.
Besides the U.K., Revolut has a banking license in the European Union, and it operates in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.S. Revolut launched operations in India last October, is about to start operating in Colombia this year, and has received a banking license in Mexico.
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Tech
Amazon taps Sweden’s Einride for its electric big rigs
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. Einride will also provide charging infrastructure across five locations in the United States, under the agreement announced Tuesday.
Amazon isn’t buying or operating the electric trucks. Instead, Einride will own and manage (using its own Saga AI software) the trucks, which can be used by drivers in Amazon’s Relay freight network. Relay, launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers can use to book hauling gigs with Amazon.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli, who took over as chief nearly a year ago, said working with Amazon is a powerful validation of the startup’s technology and strategic vision.
“By deploying our intelligent platform within one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics networks, we are accelerating growth, while continuing to build industry-leading operational expertise,” he said in a statement.
Einride has gained attention and investment for its two-pronged approach to freight. The company has developed and now operates a fleet of about 200 heavy-duty electric trucks for companies like Heineken, PepsiCo, and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America, and the UAE. It has also developed autonomous pod-like trucks, which stand out for their cab-less design.
The agreement with Amazon doesn’t include the autonomous pods.
Einride has landed this agreement at a critical time: The startup is finalizing a merger with blank-check company Legato Merger Corp. and is expected to go public soon.
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While the agreement might not carry the same weight for Amazon, which has a market cap of $2.7 trillion, it does contribute to its low-carbon goals. Amazon has said it wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
“This rollout is an important step forward in addressing one of the toughest challenges we face in decarbonizing our transportation network — electrifying heavy-duty trucking,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’re excited to continue to collaborate with Einride and learn from these operations as the trucks hit the road.”
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Tech
YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities
YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday.
The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue.
Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.
The technology was first made available to a subset of YouTube creators in a pilot program last year before expanding more broadly to include politicians, government officials, and journalists this spring.
Now YouTube says the technology is being made available to those in the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent. The company has support from major agencies like CAA, UTA, WME, and Untitled Management, which offered feedback on the new tool.
Use of the likeness detection tool does not require entertainers to have their own YouTube channels.
Instead, the feature scans for AI-generated content to detect visual matches of an enrolled participant’s face. Users can then choose to request removal of the video for privacy policy violations, submit a copyright removal request, or do nothing. YouTube notes that it won’t remove all content, as it permits parody and satire content under its rules.
In the future, the technology will support audio as well, the company says.
Related to this, YouTube has also been advocating for similar protections at a federal level, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in Washington, D.C. This would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized re-creations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.
The company hasn’t yet said how many removals of AI deepfakes have been managed by the tool so far, but noted in March that the amount of removals was still “very small.”
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