When a large, multinational business settles payments through the conventional financial system, they are subject to banking hours and to possible delays. That’s why many big firms—airlines, hotels, stadiums, restaurant chains and others—are turning to stablecoins, which are built on blockchain technology and allow for instant, around-the-clock settlement. In response, startups are emerging to help the firms navigate this new landscape—including Cyclops, which aims to help payments companies expedite stablecoin adoption.
On Wednesday, Cyclops announced that it raised $8 million at an undisclosed valuation from Castle Island Ventures, F-Prime and Shift4 Payments.
“Our vision and our goal is to be that go-to platform that payments companies think of when they need to build different stablecoin solutions,” said co-CEO Alex Wilson, who launched Cyclops along with co-founders Pat Duffy and David Johnson.
Blade, the New York-based company where customers can use a helicopter to get to the airport, is an example of a firm that uses Cyclops. Wilson’s startup provides the stablecoin infrastructure for its new investor, Shift4, which is also the payments company used by Blade.
When Blade settles its payments with stablecoins, they are using Cyclops as the technological plumbing. Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-founded company that provides commercial visits to space, also uses Shift4 and Cyclops.
Cyclops is not Wilson’s first company. He and Duffy started The Giving Block in 2018, which helps charities accept crypto donations. That startup was bought in 2022 by Shift4, where Wilson worked as head of crypto alongside his current co-founders for more than three years before launching his new startup.
The three co-founders say that their tenure at Shift4 is in large part what brought them to launch Cyclops. At the payments company, they had to use multiple vendors, like ZeroHash, Bridge, and BVNK, to build out its crypto offerings. They felt that this fragmentation was difficult to contend with and sought to start their own firm that could be the one-stop shop for payment companies to develop their crypto services.
Cyclops currently has 20 employees and generates revenue through transaction fees. Wilson declined to disclose the exact revenue figures.
The startup would like to expand and partner with payment processors like Fiserv, Adyen, and Global Payments. Other potential partners would be payment networks like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
When asked why the startup is called Cyclops, Wilson said it was because he would like it to be a one-stop shop for payments companies rather than having to rely on multiple vendors. He also said it was because he and his co-founders like Greek mythology.
Clarification: This article was updated to clarify that Cyclops aims to help payments companies expedite stablecoin adoption. An earlier version of the piece said that their infrastructure layer would help expedite stablecoin adoption.
Clarification: This article was updated to clarify that Duffy and Wilson co-founded The Giving Block, not just Duffy.
