Thunes, a B2B fintech startup developing a cross-border payments network for emerging markets, raises $60M Series B; the company now operates in ~100 countries
Context & Ripple Effects
Thunes has moved fast since its February 2019 spin-out from TransferTo: within three months it had closed a $10M Series A led by GGV aimed at making financial services accessible in emerging markets. This $60M Series B is the scale-up round, extending a network that now reaches roughly 100 countries.
The raise lands in a crowded but well-funded lane — Currencycloud had just pulled in an $80M Series E backed by Visa and BNP Paribas for cross-border payment APIs — and the funding trail since confirms the thesis held: Thunes went on to a Series C at a $900M+ valuation and eventually a US-expansion-focused growth round.
First-order effects
- Thunes gains the capital to densify its cross-border B2B network across ~100 countries, where mobile wallets and local financial institutions become reachable counterparties through one integration rather than dozens of bilateral arrangements.
Second-order effects
- Rivals building cross-border rails — Currencycloud on the API side, and later NomuPay with its own rapid-fire raises — face pressure to match emerging-market corridor coverage, pushing the sector toward breadth-of-network as the competitive metric rather than per-transfer pricing alone.
Third-order effects
- Thunes' own trajectory — from TransferTo spin-out to a $900M+ valuation and a push into the US market — suggests emerging-markets payment specialists can graduate into global infrastructure players, concentrating cross-border flows among a few heavily capitalized networks.
The trend: Cross-border B2B payments infrastructure is attracting successive, ever-larger venture rounds as startups race to connect emerging markets into global financial networks.