Invest4 publishers2 min readPublished
HIFI's $37 million Series A funds dollar settlement for tokenized trades outside bank hours
HIFI raised a $37 million Series A led by Left Lane Capital for rails that settle the dollar side of tokenized trades around the clock. The settlement work is already running on those rails, but HIFI's own volume figures look more like payouts than settlement.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- HIFI took part in DTCC's first production trades of tokenized U.S. securities in July, selected alongside BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq.
- It has also settled a live repo in tokenized U.S. Treasuries on the Canton Network with DRW, Marex and Tradeweb, with both legs settling at the same moment.
- Sumitomo is rebuilding its cash management and trading operations on HIFI's rails.
- Since January 2025 HIFI has processed more than $227 million of stablecoin payments across 6 million transactions on Polygon alone.
- The round closed in stages, with the latest $27.3 million tranche on September 3 and earlier closes supplying the rest.
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Why it matters
- decision Treasury teams facing tokenized counterparties have to choose how to fund trades that can settle while their bank is closed, whether with stablecoin balances or funded virtual accounts.
- contradiction AlleyWatch says HIFI handles more than $7 billion a year while Ventureburn says its infrastructure can handle that much, and throughput versus capacity decides whether the fee base exists yet.
- exposure A company routing its cash leg through HIFI also depends on HIFI's partner banks, because HIFI is a registered money services business that works through existing banks instead of replacing them.
Each of those is either a first or a job in progress. According to AlleyWatch, DTCC's July trades ran on the same rails HIFI sells to payout customers [7], and the company that supplied them is two years old with about 35 staff [4]. Neither publication gave the dollar size of the DTCC trades, a go-live date for Sumitomo, or HIFI's fee rate.
HIFI sells against a timing gap. As AlleyWatch describes it, tokenized securities can move at internet speed while the dollars that pay for them settle on bank schedules that pause at night and on weekends [5]. HIFI's single API spans bank rails, stablecoins and card networks around the clock [6]. Direct stablecoin minting and redemption is on its product list [23], and it is the piece that lets a Saturday trade be paid in something that also moves on Saturday.
The traffic HIFI can count looks like payouts. Its Polygon figures work out to about $38 a transaction [14]. That cumulative total since January 2025 is roughly 3% of the more than $7 billion in annualized volume AlleyWatch reported [11][15].
"HIFI earns fees on the money that moves through its platform," Walsh told AlleyWatch [16]. A settlement book and a payouts book can post the same $7 billion at very different take rates, and each basis point on that total is $700,000 a year [17].
The round pays for both books. The money goes to tokenized capital markets infrastructure and to the stablecoin payments and cards products [19], along with more regulatory licenses and hiring in New York and select international markets [22]. The Visa partnership announced this month aims stablecoin-funded payouts at more than 4 billion cards [20].
I see three ways this goes. Tokenized cash legs grow into most of the volume, and the DTCC seat turns out to be the first entry in a settlement book. HIFI stays a payouts company with a DTCC credential. Or a rival wins the settlement business first. "We have our work cut out for us. This is still early in the first quarter, we have lots of competition out to take our lunch," Walsh said [21].
I'd bet on the rail more than on the vendor. The case for HIFI in particular fails if its next volume disclosure still averages tens of dollars a transaction, or if Sumitomo's rebuild is still described in the present tense when HIFI prices its next round.
What to watch
- Whether DTCC moves its tokenized U.S. securities trades beyond first production runs, and which cash-leg providers it keeps.
- Which regulatory licenses HIFI adds with the new money, and whether any changes its reliance on partner banks.
- Whether the Canton Network repo with DRW, Marex and Tradeweb becomes a recurring trade.