Charles Unaut, co-founder and CTO of RAIN, discusses building stablecoin payment infrastructure that has grown 80x in 12-18 months. RAIN partners with over 200 customers including Etherfi, Cast, Avalanche, and Western Union to power stablecoin-backed cards and payment solutions.

The conversation covers RAIN's journey from a DAO-focused card provider to becoming a principal member of Visa with direct settlement capabilities. Charles explains how they collapsed the traditional card infrastructure stack by combining issuing bank and program manager functions.

Key topics include the technical challenges of achieving Visa principal membership, international expansion strategies, on-chain credit integration, and the broader transition toward tokenized financial rails. The discussion also explores emerging market adoption, agent-to-agent transactions, and the company's rapid fundraising across multiple rounds in 2024-2025.

From DAO Cards to $2 Billion Valuation

RAIN started as 'credit cards for DAOs' in 2021, solving the problem that crypto-native organizations couldn't spend their stablecoins or open traditional bank accounts

Early customers like Cabin DAO and Party DAO had 'hair-on-fire' problems - they held stablecoins but couldn't spend them in daily operations

The founding insight came from building Sign and Wire, where ACH transfers took 5+ days while stablecoin payments were instant and traceable

Balaji Srinivasan became their first angel investor on Christmas Eve 2021, using the product to invest via USDC when traditional banks were closed

Breaking the Visa Principal Membership Barrier

RAIN achieved Visa principal membership in early 2024, an extremely rare accomplishment for a four-year-old company that typically only banks obtain

Principal membership allows direct settlement with Visa, eliminating the need for traditional banking partners and enabling stablecoin-native infrastructure

The process required 'a lot of perseverance and luck' with no guidebook - 'You have to kind of drive the process yourself' - Charles

This membership enables RAIN to collapse the traditional card stack, serving as both issuing bank and program manager without being a deposit-taking institution

Revenue Model and Competitive Advantages

RAIN generates approximately $100 million in revenue through interchange fees (shared with Visa) and SaaS subscription fees across three customer tiers

Traditional issuers must hold four days of spending as collateral with card networks; RAIN only needs one day due to stablecoin settlement efficiency

Revenue is majority international, with customers focused on Latin America, emerging markets, and cross-border use cases rather than US domestic spending

The collapsed stack model allows RAIN to share more revenue with partners, enabling them to offer higher rewards than traditional card programs

Emerging Markets and Global Expansion

Stablecoins serve as 'dollar cards' in countries with volatile currencies, providing access to US dollar savings without traditional banking restrictions

Cross-border B2B payments and remittances represent major use cases, eliminating multi-day settlement delays and high traditional fees

RAIN's global issuing footprint allows customers to discover unexpected demand - one customer found success in an unplanned market and opened an office there

Western Union partnership enables stablecoin remittances where recipients can choose traditional pickup or stablecoin delivery through mobile apps

On-Chain Credit and Future Infrastructure

RAIN tokenizes credit card receivables and borrows from on-chain lenders through Credit Coup protocol to bridge daily settlement gaps with Visa

Smart contracts automatically redirect customer payments to repay on-chain loans, creating programmatic settlement of tokenized receivables

Future applications include instant home closing processes where escrow funding can happen outside banking hours through stablecoin settlement

Agent-to-agent transactions are 'inevitable' as more daily activities become automated and require programmatic, cross-border payment capabilities

Rapid-Fire Fundraising and Company Culture

RAIN raised three rounds in 2024-2025: Series A with Norwest, $58M Series B with Sapphire, and $250M Series C with Iconic Capital

The company survived a two-year 'no man's land' period post-FTX where traditional VCs saw them as crypto and crypto VCs saw them as boring

Team grew from 15 to 80 people in one year, with 60% based in New York City and 40% of the company in engineering roles

Revenue is almost entirely inbound-driven with minimal outbound sales, though they're now transitioning to more targeted outbound efforts

Resources Mentioned

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l world. And I think the same thing is happening in stablecoins where people are transitioning from paper money or even like electronic money, but that's not tokenized, it's not digitized, to tokenize