OpenFX claims big cross-border wins

A company called OpenFX says it has pushed more than $40 billion of annualized payment volume through a new cross-border money system just 18 months after launch, and Reuters reported the figure at over $45 billion annualized when the company raised $94 million on March 31, 2026. The pitch is simple: move money across borders in under an hour instead of waiting two to five business days. (reuters.com) Cross-border payments still run on a relay race built for bank hours, where one bank hands money to another bank, each middleman takes a fee, and the transfer can stall over a weekend. Pantera says businesses often face delays of two to seven days and fees of 1% to 3% on those older routes. (panteracapital.com) OpenFX is trying to replace that relay race with a bridge asset that moves 24 hours a day. That bridge asset is a stablecoin, which is a digital token designed to track a regular currency like the United States dollar so the money can move on internet-based rails before landing back in local bank accounts. (reuters.com) The company says it plugs into local payment systems and uses software to choose the cheapest route instead of relying on the old correspondent banking chain. Pantera says the product is sold through an application programming interface, which is the software pipe other companies use to connect their own apps directly into OpenFX. (panteracapital.com) On OpenFX’s own site, the comparison is blunt: traditional transfers take 2 to 5 days, cost 3% to 5%, and only work during banking hours, while its network says most transfers finish in under 60 minutes at 0.01% to 0.3% total cost and run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The company also says more than 98% of transactions settle in under 60 minutes. (openfx.com) (reuters.com) That speed changes the part of foreign exchange that usually hurts operators most: pre-funding. OpenFX says customers no longer need to park money in overseas accounts three days in advance, and can instead deposit, trade, and withdraw through one system that supports more than 40 currency pairs and 25 local rails. (openfx.com) The customers it talks about are not tourists swapping cash at an airport desk. Reuters says demand is coming from financial technology firms, digital banks, remittance providers, and payroll platforms, which are the kinds of businesses that move millions at a time and care about shaving hours and fractions of a percent off every transfer. (reuters.com) Founder Prabhakar Reddy told Reuters the gap appears in transfers between $1 million and $10 million, where the old market can run thin and spreads get ugly fast. Reddy started OpenFX in 2024 after seeing long lines outside Western Union branches in Dubai, and he previously co-founded FalconX, a crypto prime brokerage firm. (reuters.com) The company is still small compared with the market it wants to attack. Pantera cites more than $200 trillion in annual cross-border payment volume in 2024 from J.P. Morgan, and says that figure could pass $300 trillion within the next several years. (panteracapital.com) So the real claim here is not that stablecoins won consumer payments overnight. The claim is narrower and more concrete: in some business-to-business corridors, stablecoins are already being used as invisible plumbing to cut settlement from days to minutes, cut costs from whole percentage points to basis points, and make foreign exchange work on a Saturday night instead of waiting for Monday morning. (openfx.com) (panteracapital.com)