Huma, the First Payment Financing (PayFi) Network, Announces $38 Million in Funding

The vast majority of businesses and people around the world depend on a form of payment financing. Credit cards alone finance $16T in merchant payments globally.

Huma, a pioneer in the Payment Financing (PayFi) domain, announced today that it has secured $38 million in funding. This round was spearheaded by Distributed Global, with substantial participation from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, the Stellar Development Foundation, and TIBAS Ventures, the venture capital arm of İşbank, the largest private bank in Turkiye. A portion of this raise was allocated to investments in high-yield real world assets (RWA) on the platform.

The vast majority of businesses and individuals worldwide rely on some form of payment financing. Credit cards alone facilitate $16T in merchant payments globally. Trade finance enables $10 trillion in B2B payments. One in every six families depends on remittances—money sent back home across the borders—yet even that system depends on trillions of dollars being locked in pre-funding accounts. The list goes on. While the demand for payment financing increases daily, creating an urgent need for more innovative solutions, traditional financial institutions are unable—or unwilling—to meet this need, widening the liquidity gap with each passing day.

Payment financing is so deeply ingrained in every aspect of our lives that, without it, the entire economy would stop growing.

PayFi aims to address this massive liquidity gap by shifting trillions of dollars of real world payment volume to blockchains and stablecoins. By leveraging the core strengths of blockchain—specifically, the programmable nature of money and the ability to move funds globally in seconds—PayFi also enables new real-world use-cases that were previously impossible. Keeping all of these use cases in mind, Huma has built the first ever PayFi network, adopting an open, modular and decentralized approach to empower interoperable solutions across participants. By combining the best of RWA, Payments, and DeFi, Huma is creating a network that is far more efficient and accessible than traditional alternatives.

"While designing Huma, we often asked ourselves: How do you build an open payment financing network on blockchain that is more powerful than Visa? Today, stablecoins are already powering $2T in payments annually. An open payment financing network is going to help grow the entire payment ecosystem faster." said Huma co-founder Richard Liu. "The surge of interest we're seeing right now is a testament to PayFi's potential. As more partners join us every week, it's clear that PayFi is quickly becoming the new frontier of RWA."

In line with this vision, Huma's merger with Arf, the leading on-demand liquidity solution for global payments, brought together two of the most prominent PayFi players in April. Together, Huma and Arf have already processed over $1.8 billion in payment financing transactions and are on track to reach $10 billion next year, making them one of the fastest growing use cases for Circle's USDC.

Part of this raise came as investments into Arf's high-yield RWA assets. The Stellar Development Foundation provided a $10 million investment. Additionally, tokenized assets are currently available to accredited investors on Scroll for a limited period. With this funding infusion, Huma plans to further expand its PayFi network to the Stellar smart contract platform and to Solana in the coming months, making sure the network is accessible from all the major payments-focused chains.

"Moving money quickly and cheaply across borders is at the core of what the Stellar network does best. PayFi is providing real world utility that solves problems for people and companies, and it is the type of project tailor-made for the Stellar network. We look forward to continuing to working with Huma to grow the PayFi ecosystem," said Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation.

"Huma's PayFi network represents an important step forward in payment financing, offering solutions to long-standing inefficiencies in the industry," said Chao Deng, CEO of HashKey Capital. "We believe innovations like this are crucial for addressing real-world challenges, and we're pleased to see Huma playing a key role in advancing the Web3 space."

Huma's growing PayFi network has caught the attention of leading blockchain advocates, further fueling the momentum behind PayFi. The Solana Foundation's support signals how PayFi's innovative on-chain financial solutions are set to redefine global finance.

"PayFi is the creation of new financial markets around the time value of money. On-chain finance can enable new financial primitives, product experiences, and financial access that are impossible in traditional or even Web2 finance. When I met the Huma team, it was immediately apparent that they'd be a great anchor for the PayFi ecosystem within Solana." said Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation.

Later this year, Huma also plans to launch the Huma Foundation, a pivotal move to decentralize its PayFi network and broaden global access, further solidifying its leadership in the RWA space.

Additionally, in collaboration with the Solana Foundation and Stellar Development Foundation, Huma is set to host the inaugural PayFi Summit