Atum Launches With $13.5M Seed for Open Payments Network
Fundraise Insider tracks newly funded startups each week and delivers verified sales leads of C-suite contacts straight to your inbox, so you reach the right people while the funding is still fresh. See pricing.
Atum has come out of stealth with $13.5 million in Seed round funding. Its backers are Variant, PayPal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Road Capital, Mirana Ventures, First Commit, Credibly Neutral and strategic advisor Charlie Songhurst.
The company is based in San Francisco. It has built what it calls the open payments network for global money movement, a single coordination layer connecting payment companies, developers and enterprises.
Atum does not issue a currency, operate a blockchain, favor any rail or take custody of customer funds. The problem it targets is fragmentation. Payments are split across currencies, chains, apps and local rails that do not talk to each other, and every handoff adds cost, delay and complexity. Stablecoins move money quickly and cheaply, but they live on many different blockchains, which pushes that complexity onto users.
On Atum, any integrator, developer or application can submit a payment request, and settlement providers compete to fulfill it across any supported chain and stablecoin. The network includes native authorization, reversible payments and identity. Senders state what they will send and receivers get what they asked for. Atum earns only on volume, which it says keeps the network credibly neutral.
The customer base spans card issuers and acquirers, payment service providers, card networks, stablecoin orchestrators, wallets, fintech companies and enterprises, plus developers building on top. Atum supports both regular stablecoin payments and agentic payments through protocols including x402 and MPP, and humans and agents are already completing payments on it.
Founder and CEO Pete Cooling previously led the crypto product team at Visa and has spent the past decade researching and building blockchain-based payment systems. He also represented Visa on the Linux OpenWallet Foundation, helping shape standards for digital wallets. The California startup operates as an open-loop payments and commerce platform.
Payments infrastructure, compliance and treasury vendors can get fresh executive contacts at newly funded financial startups every week through FinTech Lead Generation.
More Funding News
- Left Lane Capital Leads HIFI’s $37M Series A for Tokenized Money
- Oak HC/FT Leads $35M Series A for Stablecoin Startup Latitude
- Visa, Circle and Ripple Add $10M to Velocity’s Series A
- Intermezzo Raises $10M Seed for AI-Native Global Payroll Engine
- M13 Leads Baselayer’s $35M Series A for AI Agent Identity