HIFI's $37M Series A: Why $7B A Year Is Still Early Innings

More than an on-ramp

Walsh does not want HIFI defined as an on- and off-ramp or a payments company. "We really want to be, like, the technology company for the next decade to build out completely new financial products," he said. The volume runs across multi-party disbursements, escrow logic and cross-chain settlement, and he points to developer retention as one of the strongest signs the product works, with teams expanding into new product lines once they are on the API.

Stablecoins to Visa cards

The new Visa Inc push-to-card product, now in early access, lets developers build on HIFI's APIs to send stablecoins directly to Visa cards, which Walsh says other companies cannot do today. It aims at markets where building local regulatory and banking presence would take years. Walsh says all of these transactions settle at T-zero over Visa's network, and he expects use cases nobody has anticipated to appear within the next six months.

Who is using it

Besides the 50 platform customers, Walsh says HIFI has onboarded about 10,000 businesses and 200,000 individuals. Dapper Labs was probably one of its first five customers, now runs its full settlement stack through HIFI, and gets support for its Peak Money business unit. Sumitomo Corporation uses the platform for cash management. Walsh expects a much larger capital markets push over the next 12 months.

Against chasing volume

Walsh is critical of inflated total processed volume claims in the stablecoin industry and says HIFI takes a long-term view of how it treats partners, customers and teammates. His advice to founders is to build a good product and let the volume follow.

He applies the same thinking to the team. Everyone at HIFI works in the New York office five days a week, with no remote hires. He puts typical Series A and B attrition at 40 to 50%, while HIFI has lost three or four people in its history and average tenure is over two years.