Depay bets QR payments can cross borders; $400M processed in year one

Cross-border payment infrastructure: Depay connects national QR and real-time payment systems so banks and wallets can accept payments in other countries through one integration, handling interoperability, FX conversion and settlement itself.

That QR and instant-payment networks would pay for one interconnecting layer, letting any bank or wallet operate across borders like a local without card rails.

Backed early by Techstars, Krealo VC, Seedstars, Stellar and DCG; a $4M seed in April 2026 was led by North Island Ventures with DCG, CMT Digital, Verda Ventures, Onigiri Capital and Hash3.

Joaquín Fagalde led a crypto-payments project at AB InBev before hitting the structural gap: no infrastructure let digital wallets work across Latin American borders. In 2023 he left corporate life and founded Depay in Buenos Aires with Marcelo Sánchez and Federico Testoni to connect the region's payment systems; the first hurdle was convincing banks and wallets, not writing software.

Depay went live across Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Peru. In June 2025 Brubank, Argentina's largest digital bank, began letting users pay in Brazil through Pix on Depay's rails — the first Argentine bank to do so — with automatic real-time peso-to-real conversion. The architecture mixes local payment rails with a blockchain layer that settles cross-border flows in stablecoins, mostly USDT. In April 2026 Depay raised a $4M seed led by North Island Ventures to extend the network across Latin America, connect Asian instant-payment systems and enter Africa and Europe.

Still early but moving: Depay says it processed more than $400M in instant payments in under a year and built a network reaching more than 300M users, with clients including Binance, belo, Airtm, Brubank and Takenos. It operates in five of the 80-plus countries that have real-time systems and aims to replace card networks and SWIFT for cross-border flows.

Latin America's QR and instant-payment systems grew country by country, so the scarce asset became the bridge between them — not another wallet competing for the same users.

Fagalde saw the gap inside AB InBev: wallets could not cross borders for regulatory and commercial reasons, not just technical ones, so Depay had to sell banks a complete solution, not code.

Settling in stablecoins let Depay bypass card networks and correspondent banking for cross-border flows, turning FX and settlement into a real-time software problem.

Early partners like Brubank were the wedge: one flagship bank going regional on Depay's rails proved the model to the rest of the market.

When every country builds its own fast-payment island, the value sits in the interconnecting layer; the moat is regulatory and commercial trust, not code.

As of September 2026, Depay is compounding early: over $400M processed in under a year, a network reaching 300M+ users, and a $4M seed in April 2026 led by North Island Ventures to expand across Latin America and into Asia, Africa and Europe. Clients include Binance, belo, Airtm, Brubank and Takenos, and Brubank's Pix launch proves a bank can go regional without branches abroad. The open question is execution: Depay operates in five of 80-plus real-time-payment countries, and stablecoin settlement plus per-country regulation will decide whether the network compounds or stalls.