Diameter Pay raises $10M in Series A to power cross-border payments with crypto rails

Diameter Pay, the embedded payments company that quietly routes billions in cross-border transfers for banks, just landed $10 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by CMT Digital and Lightspeed Faction, two firms with deep roots in blockchain infrastructure.

For a company that started life as a college project at MIT in 2017, the milestone marks a significant inflection point. Diameter Pay says it has processed more than $10 billion in regulated payments to date, and now it wants to add virtual currency corridors to its toolkit.

Who’s writing the checks

CMT Digital, one of the round’s co-leads, has a portfolio that includes Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin.

Lightspeed Faction, the other co-lead, recently closed a $285 million inaugural fund dedicated to early-stage blockchain infrastructure.

The $10 million represents a major step up from Diameter Pay’s earlier fundraising history. In its prior incarnation as SendFriend, the company raised roughly $1.82 million through 2019. That means this single round is more than five times its entire previous fundraising combined.

From SendFriend to Diameter Pay

The company’s origin story starts at MIT, where it was founded in 2017 under the name SendFriend. The original mission focused on making remittances cheaper and faster, particularly for underserved corridors where traditional banking infrastructure is expensive or simply absent.

In April 2023, the company rebranded to Diameter Pay, reflecting a broader ambition. The pivot moved the company from a consumer-facing remittance service to an embedded payments API provider serving banks and financial institutions directly.

The company operates out of New York and Jersey City.

The virtual currency play

Diameter Pay is building on-chain settlement options alongside its traditional payment rails, giving bank clients the ability to choose how transactions are settled on the back end.

To bolster that compliance layer, Diameter Pay has partnered with Flagright to implement real-time transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering screening. That partnership is set to go live in July 2025.

Diameter Pay has concentrated on emerging Asia, where cross-border payment costs remain stubbornly high and financial inclusion gaps are widest.

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