Rain CEO Says Merchants Receive Stablecoin Payments Without Knowing It

With stablecoins increasingly moving through existing payment networks, many merchants don’t know they are receiving stablecoin payments, Rain CEO Farooq Malik told The Block, according to a report posted Wednesday (Aug. 19).

Rain facilitates stablecoin payments that settle through Visa’s payment network in about three days, according to the report.

More than 100,000 merchants currently receive those payments without knowing they are stablecoin payments, Malik said, per the report.

Malik told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an interview posted in September that the current wave of stablecoin innovation is less about launching consumer-facing apps and more about embedding stablecoins into existing networks.

With this approach, payment service providers can maintain the merchant experience while cutting costs in their own operations, banks can use tokenized dollars to balance intraday liquidity and multinationals can reduce friction in intercompany transfers.

When it comes to stablecoins in commerce, Rain’s thesis is to let those who want a stablecoin-native experience have it, while upgrading the rest invisibly.

“Card networks by and large have actually figured out this … risk shift framework … chargeback modality … [and] adjudicate disputes,” Malik told Webster. “All our underlying account infrastructure and authorization infrastructure also allows for chargebacks, allows for refunds … covered by the same protections that you would get from any other payment card.”

“The easiest way to upgrade or increase adoption is by making it look and feel the same,” Malik said.

About a month before that interview, in August 2025, Rain raised $58 million in a Series B funding round to expand its global stablecoin infrastructure platform and services. The fundraise came five months after the company’s Series A and brought its total funding to $88.5 million.

Rain said at the time that its technology is used by enterprises, neobanks, platforms and developers to move, store and use stablecoins instantly and compliantly through global payment cards, on/offramps, wallets and cross-border rails.

The company added that the Series B came at a time when enterprise interest in stablecoins had surged after the passage of the GENIUS Act in the United States and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework in Europe.

“Stablecoins are shifting to the backbone of global commerce,” Malik said.