Tether backs $10M funding round for stablecoin payments startup Mansa

Tether has led a $10 million funding round for Mansa, a fintech firm specializing in stablecoin-powered cross-border payments.

According to a February 20 press release, Mansa raised $3 million in a pre-seed round backed by Tether and co-led by Polymorphic Capital, with support from Octerra Capital, Faculty Group, and Trive Digital.

The company also secured an additional $7 million in liquidity funding from corporate investors and quantitative funds to expand its reach in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

With the funding, Mansa aims to improve cross-border transactions.

The company plans to scale its stablecoin-based payment solutions, helping “empower payment companies with seamless, real-time settlement infrastructure” while avoiding the inefficiencies of traditional banking systems, according to Mouloukou Sanoh, co-founder and CEO of Mansa.

“By bringing payments on-chain and leveraging efficient liquidity solutions, we are addressing critical challenges in cross-border transactions,” Sanoh continued, adding that Mansa aims to make payments “faster, cheaper, and more reliable” at a global scale.

Launched last year in August, Mansa has since processed over $27 million in on-chain transactions, with nearly $11 million recorded in January alone.

It leverages stablecoins to help reduce remittance costs and settlement times.

Sanoh believes such a solution has the potential to transform global payments, particularly for import-heavy economies struggling with US dollar shortages.

With stablecoins already processing more transaction volume than major payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, according to ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2025 report, Mansa sees an opportunity to bridge the gap between fiat and digital assets.

USDT dominates the stablecoin market

The overall stablecoin market is valued at over $225 billion as of press time, according to data from DefiLlama, and USDT, the flagship stablecoin from Tether, dominates the majority of the market share.

When writing, USDT held a market cap of $141.78 billion, alongside a 24-hour trading volume of $29.02 billion.

Meanwhile, USDC, its closest competitor by market cap, stood at $56.30 billion, with a 24-hour volume of just $6.71 billion.

Launched in October 2014 as Realcoin by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars, USDT initially operated on the Bitcoin blockchain via the Omni Layer protocol.

Over the years, Tether expanded to multiple blockchains, including Ethereum (ERC-20), Tron (TRC-20), Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, and Algorand, among others.

Tether continues expanding

As the largest stablecoin issuer, Tether has also expanded its presence across the globe and launched new offerings, including new stablecoins.

As of February 2025, Tether offers several stablecoins pegged to different fiat currencies, including EURT, which is pegged to the euro, and CNHT, pegged to the offshore Chinese yuan.

Earlier this month, Mobile payments app Oobit raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Tether.

The following day, Tether partnered with UAE-based real estate platform Reelly Tech to introduce USDT-based payments.

On February 11, Tether announced a strategic investment in the self-custodial crypto wallet Zengo.