● Due provides borderless multi-currency accounts and international payments through their decentralised, non-custodial platform, offering clients direct control over their assets.
● $3.3 million Seed round led by Semantic and Fabric Ventures, with participation from BlockTower VC, Speedinvest, Polymorphic Capital and Discovery Ventures.
● Due plans to go live in November, focused on corridors connecting the United States, Europe, United Kingdom and Sub-Saharan Africa. Expansion into Latin America and Asia-Pacific planned for Q1 2024.

London, 7 November 2023 — Due, a next-gen fintech startup headquartered in London, today announced a $3.3 million Seed round. Harnessing the power of blockchain technology.
Due’s mission is to redefine international payments, making them faster, more affordable and
universally accessible.

The round was led by Semantic and Fabric Ventures, with participation from BlockTower, Speedinvest, Polymorphic Capital and Discovery Ventures, as well as esteemed angel investors including Itamar Lesuisse (CEO at Argent), Pavel Karagjaur (VP of Growth at Bolt) and Emil Urmanshin (Director of Crypto at Revolut). The fresh capital will be used to further develop Due’s technology and to expand its fiat currency connectivity to more markets.

While local payment networks continue to improve with real-time payments becoming more prevalent (e.g. PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, Faster Payments in the UK, and most recently FedNow in the US), what’s lacking is the connectivity across domestic payment rails.

Cross-border payments are expected to reach volumes of $200 trillion by 2027 (according to Ernst & Young), but much of the market is still fragmented. To move funds across borders, traditional banking rails or manual OTC payments are still the only options in many parts of the world. The average cost of international payments is estimated to be 5-6% of the transaction volume, while capital controls restrict companies and individuals in high inflation countries from accessing stable assets or other inflation hedges entirely.

CEO and Co-Founder Robert Sargsian (formerly at Revolut and Bolt), explained,

“The current global financial system, especially in emerging markets, is riddled with inefficiencies.
Accepting payments from overseas, paying to international vendors, or even moving funds between accounts in different countries is expensive, slow and hard to access. We’re here to challenge and change that.”

Due is building a payment platform that connects domestic payment rails via open and interoperable blockchain protocols. Their web platform enables customers to open borderless accounts and make/receive payments across 50+ markets using their preferred local payment methods. By building on Ethereum and its various scaling solutions (e.g. Arbitrum, Base, OP, with Starknet and zkSync coming soon), Due aims to empower underserved and emerging markets with uninterrupted access to global liquidity, while facilitating transactions at much lower costs and significantly faster settlement times
compared to traditional methods.

The platform is powered by Due’s proprietary protocol layer composed of smart contracts and its own relayer infrastructure, which includes various integrations with DEXs like Uniswap and bridges like Circle’s CCTP. All of this is abstracted away from the user, and the end result is a sleek user experience without any of the complexities that often hinder adoption of decentralised applications.

“We believe that most future payments will occur on-chain. In fact, spreads for USD/EUR stablecoin pairs on DEXs are already more attractive than USD/EUR fiat pairs on traditional FX platforms today,” stated Robert.

Due stands apart from existing providers by offering fully non-custodial accounts. The clients maintain complete control over their assets on decentralised networks, ensuring direct access without the need for intermediaries. Additionally, the accounts are smart contract wallets with Account Abstraction rather than standard Externally Owned Accounts, allowing for smoother UX: simplified one-click executions, gasless transactions and guardrails for added security.

Due is set to launch this November focused on key corridors connecting the United States, Europe, United Kingdom and Sub-Saharan Africa, with expansion into Latin America and Asia-Pacific scheduled for Q1 ‘24. The company is also actively working on integrating digitised Real World Assets (e.g. tokenised US Treasuries) as a vehicle to provide wider access to treasury and yield-bearing assets.

Co-Founders Robert Sargsian and Alex Popov, CTO, are joined by a global team spanning across London, Munich, New York, Sofia, Lagos and Mexico City. These team members bring experience from renowned companies including Revolut, Uber, Binance and Bolt. Team Semantic said,

“We are thrilled to back Due as they dare to rebuild global payments from first principles, leveraging the latest advances in infrastructure to address the current and future needs of the new generation of users.” Fabric Ventures Partner Anil Hansjee added, “Due’s approach to programmable on-chain
payments is very forward-looking and aligned with the whole crypto ethos. We are excited to
support the team in their journey.”

Speedinvest Partner Olga Shekhantsova remarked, “Due is filling a critical gap in the B2B international payments sector, especially for emerging markets.”

BlockTower VC Partner Thomas Klocanas also emphasised, “Due stands out for their
real-world application of crypto and stablecoins, which covers more than pure crypto-native
markets and speculation.”

“We want to be a driving force in bringing more businesses and individuals on-chain,” shared
Sargsian, “our vision is a future where money is truly global, permissionless, and inclusive.”

About Due
Established in 2022, Due is a London-based fintech startup with a vision to reshape
international payments through stablecoins and blockchain technology. The company
provides multi-currency accounts, global transfers/remittances and merchant acquiring for
businesses and individuals.

Due built its platform on top of decentralised networks to enable accessible, fast, and cheap
international money movements. The platform is non-custodial, enabling clients to have full
control of, and direct access to, their assets without the involvement of intermediaries.
For more information, visit opendue.com. For additional information or to schedule an interview, please contact [email protected].

About Semantic
Semantic is a venture capital firm established in 2018. It backs founders at the early stages
of building new rails for data and the digital economy. Since its inception, it has made
investments in open networks and computing platforms, scalability and security
infrastructure, payments, gaming, data intelligence and analytics, fintech, creator tools,
communication protocols and other categories leveraging emerging decentralised
technologies. Learn more at www.semantic.vc

About Fabric Ventures
Fabric is a venture contributor building and backing the boldest ideas in Web3 and AI, to
create a more fair, productive and sustainable economy—an Open Economy. We provide
capital and support to technical co-founders across the entire lifecycle of their companies,
from ideation to scaling to decentralisation and community ownership. Fabric has a total
portfolio market capitalization of $134 billion representative of 116 global investments across
pre-ideation to Series B and beyond with a few of our portfolio deals including: Polkadot,
Sorare, NEAR, 1inch and many more. We have over 240+ Limited Partners spanning across
the global including The European Investment Bank through to large conglomerates, single
and multi family offices further supported by the most prominent builders from across
Web3.Discover our full investment thesis, team, portfolio and more on our website:
www.fabric.vc

About Speedinvest
Speedinvest is a leading early-stage venture capital firm with more than €1 billion AuM and
40+ investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, and Vienna. Our dedicated
sector-focused teams are the first to fund Europe’s most innovative technology startups and
our in-house operational experts are on hand to offer founders ongoing support with growth,
HR, market expansion, and more. Wefox, Bitpanda, TIER Mobility, GoStudent, Wayflyer,
Open, CoachHub, Schüttflix, TourRadar, Adverity, and TWAICE are among our portfolio of
250+ companies. Learn more at www.speedinvest.com

About BlockTower
BlockTower is an institutional investment firm, founded in 2017, focused on digital assets and
blockchain technology. They partner with the companies and projects building the world’s
decentralised future, as investors and as users, from the earliest private stages to and
through the liquid public market journey, with a team applying professional trading, venture
investing, and risk management to this digital asset class.
Learn more: https://www.blocktower.com