Mesh Hits $1bn Valuation In Series C Round To Scale Crypto Payments

The New York–based company said in an announcement that the financing will be put toward product roll-out, regulatory compliance and building partnerships that allow institutional players to issue tokenized deposits and move fiat onchain under custody and trust arrangements. 

The company, which describes its product as a "universal crypto payments network", framed the raise as a step toward making tokenized dollar rails and business-grade on-chain plumbing usable by mainstream issuers and payment providers.

Linking crypto payments

Mesh enables users to pay with crypto from one platform while allowing merchants or counterparties to receive settlement in a different asset, without either side needing to manage custody, blockchain integrations, or liquidity routing directly. 

The firm says this "asset-agnostic" approach is designed to remove frictions that have limited crypto’s adoption in everyday payments.

Interest in its technology is increasingly coming from fintechs, exchanges and financial institutions looking to embed crypto transfers into existing products, rather than from speculative trading use cases. The company is positioning its infrastructure as a compliant layer that mirrors traditional payments controls while operating on blockchain rails.

Central banks jump in

The funding comes as central banks are already testing tokenized payment rails to modernize cross-border transactions, using shared ledgers that keep settlement within regulated systems, the Bank for International Settlements said in its Project Agorá update.

Mesh said demand is coming not just from crypto-native companies, but from traditional financial institutions exploring tokenized payments as a back-end upgrade. 

The firm described its role as an orchestration layer, connecting regulated issuers, custodians and payment endpoints rather than competing directly with banks.