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Mesh CEO Bam Azizi won’t be going back to the traditional method of raising venture capital. Instead, he prefers receiving investments in stablecoins.

Earlier this week, Mesh announced it raised $82 million in a Series B led by Paradigm. The funds were transferred to Mesh using PayPal’s stablecoin PYUSD, facilitated by the company’s own technology. This is fitting as PayPal Ventures participated in their Series A.

Additionally, Binance reported that Abu Dhabi’s MGX also made an investment through stablecoins, totaling $2 billion. “It kind of makes sense,” Azizi stated, questioning the reason to wait for conventional wire transfers when stablecoins enable immediate settlement. He believes both he and Binance might set a trend in this approach.

Azizi plans for future funding rounds to be stablecoin-exclusive, expressing frustration at the inefficiencies of traditional banking: “I’m tired of calling banks and manually confirming. Is it the 1990s? Come on, you can do better.”

The funding round progressed quickly—within weeks, rather than months. New updates were communicated to investors back in January, leading to a swift finalization of the funding.

Mesh previously raised $22 million in a Series A in 2023, and their recent business update on stablecoin success attracted interest from VCs like Consensys, QuantumLight, and Paradigm.

To give context, Mesh is a crypto payments company focused on simplifying payments to ensure they pass the “Grandma test,” which means that anyone can make crypto payments easily. Over the last five years, they’ve aimed to serve as a bridge in the industry, with a specific focus on stablecoins for the last two years.

Mesh takes an agnostic approach, not directly interacting with consumers but providing technology that connects networks, allowing the consumer to make payments. Azizi explained, “That’s how we stand out: by building that network versus competing with all these players. They are competing with each other. We want to be the connection layer, connecting and bridging all the gaps between these two.”

As Mesh enhances the payments experience, the goal is for people to start using crypto for transactions rather than merely holding a portfolio filled with memecoins.