Augustus Raises $180 Million to Build Clearing Bank for Stablecoins

Augustus, formerly known as Ivy, raised $180 million in a Series B funding round to support its offering that gives financial institutions around the world direct access to dollar accounts and rails through a federally chartered bank.

The company will use the new funding to continue serving FinTechs and banks in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, it said in a Tuesday (July 21) press release.

Augustus’ platform supports operating and FBO accounts with named virtual accounts and enables customers to transact with first and third parties via Swift, ACH, SEPA and stablecoins, according to the release.

“We started Augustus with a simple thesis: the Dollar is the greatest product in the world but its distribution is fundamentally broken,” Augustus CEO and Co-Founder Ferdinand Dabitz said in the release. “This financing lets us execute on our mission to provide high-quality dollar access to international FinTechs and banks. It’s time to dollarize the world.”

QED Investors was among the participants in Augustus’ latest funding round.

Nigel Morris, managing partner at QED Investors, said in the release that correspondent banking has not been challenged yet by FinTechs and that this has left global FinTechs and banks with a choice of only “slow, low-tech” incumbent correspondent banks or middleware FinTech providers.

“Augustus solves this by combining cutting-edge technology with a real bank charter, providing international financial institutions with a modern, direct dollar clearing platform,” Morris said.

PYMNTS reported May 11 that Ivy rebranded as Augustus on that day and announced that it received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a full-service U.S. national bank.

Augustus said at the time in a press release that its goal is to become the first clearing bank “for the AI era,” founded on a “stablecoin and AI-native core.”

“The existing clearing model runs on legacy correspondents that are closed 115 days a year, built for humans, and take two days to settle,” the company said.

When still known as Ivy, the company raised $20 million in an August 2023 Series A round to expand a global network for open banking payments.