FirstMark Capital Leads $6M Round in Payy to Bring Private Transactions to Stablecoins

Payy Network, the only stablecoin blockchain where transactions are private by default, announced today it has raised $6 million in a seed round led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Robot Ventures and DBA Crypto. The new funding will support continued product development, team expansion and growth as Payy scales its privacy-preserving infrastructure for institutional stablecoin payments. 

Stablecoins are rapidly gaining traction in global payments, with a current market cap nearing $300B according to data from rwa.xyz. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has projected the market could grow ten-fold to $3.7T by 2030. 

But today’s stablecoin UX has a major flaw: payments are public by default, meaning balances and transactions can be visible onchain in ways most mainstream consumers would never tolerate. 

Payy solves this by enabling private transactions for global enterprises. Using zero-knowledge proofs, card payments are shielded so onchain balances and activity can’t be linked to the transaction.

“Enterprises will never move meaningful payment flows onchain if every transaction is visible to the world,” said Sid Gandhi, CEO of Payy Network. “Today, sending a stablecoin payment is like posting your bank statement on a public website. Every amount, every recipient, every balance, visible to anyone. That’s a dealbreaker for any serious business. We’ve spent three years building the infrastructure that makes private transactions possible, and this funding lets us bring it to more institutions and accelerate the mass adoption of stablecoin payments.”

Payy’s infrastructure is already live, with its consumer payments app trusted by more than 100,000 users across 120 countries and processing approximately $130 million in annualized transaction volume, proof that a privacy-first payment stack can work for everyday users, not just the crypto native early adopters who’ve historically driven stablecoin adoption. 

Payy is now expanding the same privacy infrastructure to serve financial institutions, fintech platforms and enterprises seeking to integrate stablecoin payments without exposing sensitive transaction data, sacrificing settlement speed, interoperability, or regulatory auditability. Built on an Ethereum L2 zero-knowledge rollup, Payy operates as a vertically integrated stack, combining a self-custodial wallet, Payy Network and the Payy Visa Card, to allow users to spend USDC anywhere Visa is accepted while keeping onchain transactions private.

As stablecoins are becoming the default rails and AI agents are becoming the default operators. Private transactions are becoming the default requirement, not just a premium feature. Payy is built for all three.

FirstMark, whose portfolio has backed category-defining tech platforms including Pinterest, Shopify, and Airbnb, led the round based on its conviction that programmable money is the next generation transaction-layer upgrade and privacy is a foundational component of real-world digital assets adoption. Citing Payy’s live infrastructure and early traction as key factors in its investment decision, FirstMark’s investment thesis centers on blockchains – and increasingly stablecoins – becoming the programmable, 24/7, globally accessible financial rails of the internet, and in 2026, are investing in the companies bridging that infrastructure into real-world financial use-cases. 

“Payy fixes the missing piece that is a blocker to mainstream adoption: financial-system-level privacy for stablecoin spending, without giving up usability,” said Adam Nelson, Partner at FirstMark. “The ‘aha moment’ in diligence was seeing this breakthrough already live in the Payy app and being used by over 100,000 users, moving millions in transactions per day. As founders, Sid and Calum combine clarity of vision with deep domain expertise, and their ambition is to build a foundational infrastructure that will become a category-defining layer for stablecoins. By adding Payy to FirstMark’s extensive portfolio, we intend to add significant fuel to the fire, accelerating their path to becoming the industry standard. We’re excited to partner with them on the next step in Payy’s journey.” 

Payy was founded by Sid Gandhi, CEO, and Calum Moore, CTO. Gandhi previously worked in engineering at Apple, where he developed a focus on building high-integrity, privacy-forward products. Moore is an alumnus of Y Combinator, where he founded a company working on large-scale data analysis systems. Together, the founding team brings expertise spanning cryptographic engineering, product design, and institutional financial services. In 2025, Payy launched the Payy Visa card, the first non-custodial stablecoin card with privacy. 

With the new capital, Payy plans to expand its team, deepen integrations across financial institutions and fintech platforms, and accelerate go-to-market initiatives as stablecoins become increasingly embedded in global payment flows.