Xflow, an Indian fintech startup, has secured backing from both Stripe and PayPal Ventures in a $16.6 million funding round. The investment comes as the company seeks to gain a foothold in cross-border B2B payments, a market still dominated by banks and manual processes.
The Series A round was led by General Catalyst with participation from existing investors Square Peg, Stripe, Lightspeed and Moore Capital, while PayPal Ventures joined as a new backer. The total capital round values the Bengaluru-based startup at $85 million post-investment, taking its total funding to over $32 million to date.
Despite the rapid digitization of domestic payments, cross-border B2B transfers for Indian exporters remain heavily tied to banks, often with limited visibility into fees, settlement times and the final rupee amount received. The friction is particularly acute with larger exporters moving millions of dollars to India to fund wages and local operations, opening up space for fintech infrastructure players like Xflow, which promise greater transparency and speed in international money movements.
Founded in 2021, Xflow provides cross-border payments infrastructure for businesses ranging from exporters and SaaS firms to platforms and freelancers, enabling them to collect international payments, manage foreign currencies and settle funds in India.
“Cross-border B2B payments are stuck in a different age than UPI,” co-founder Anand Balaji (pictured above, center) said in an interview, referring to India’s widely used domestic instant payments network, Unified Payments Interface.
Balaji, who previously helped build Stripe in India, founded Xflow with former Stripe colleagues Ashwin Bhatnagar (pictured above, right) and Abhijit Chandrasekaran (pictured above, left).
Last year, Xflow said it enabled Indian businesses to collect payments from more than 100 countries in more than 25 currencies. It processed nearly $1 billion in annual cross-border payment volume last year, a roughly tenfold increase over the same period in 2024, Balaji told TechCrunch.
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According to the company, its customer base has expanded to around 15,000 enterprises including SaaS companies, global capability centers (which are offshore units that multinational companies operate in India), IT service exporters, freelancers and fintech platforms.
Transaction sizes vary widely by segment, with global capacity centers averaging about $1 million to $2 million per transaction, commodity exporters around $30,000 to $40,000 and freelancers around $3,000, according to Balaji.
Positioning itself as a payment infrastructure provider rather than a direct payment application, Xflow offers APIs that allow platforms and exporters to integrate cross-border money movement into their own products.
“We didn’t want to build another sage—we want to power another thousand sages,” Balaji said.
The startup also unveiled an AI-powered foreign exchange tool that helps finance teams optimize the timing of currency transfers. Xflow says this feature has given some customers incremental profits through data-driven forex decisions.
This tool allows businesses to set target conversion rates rather than accepting prevailing bank offers. Balaji liked the feature of limit orders when trading – instructions to buy or sell only at a certain price.
“What we’ve added is a layer of prediction and the ability to actually set a limit order,” he said. The model currently provides a three-day forecast with about 92% confidence, Balaji said, though TechCrunch could not independently verify that figure.
Xflow faces competition from banks, which still dominate large cross-border B2B transfers, as well as fintech players such as Wise, Payoneer and Skydo at the lower end of the market. But Balaji said the startup’s focus on high-value transactions and API-driven infrastructure sets it apart from many rivals.
The startup plans to deploy new capital to build additional products on top of its core payments infrastructure and secure regulatory licenses in new markets, Balaji said. Xflow is preparing to introduce import options in the coming months and is seeking licenses in Canada and Singapore, although it remains focused on India as its primary market.
Xflow has also received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India for a Payment Aggregator-Cross Border (PA-CB) license covering both exports and imports. The startup is also partnering on the platform with Easebuzz and Drip Capital to incorporate its cross-border capabilities into its offerings.
Backing from Stripe and PayPal Ventures, Balaji said, has helped bolster the startup’s credibility with banking and regulatory partners, even as it continues to work commercially with many payment providers.
The startup currently has about 65 employees as it expands its cross-border infrastructure business.