The Fintech Log
# Banking Infrastructure

Mural has raised $15 million in Series A financing, bringing its total funding to $28 million. The company provides payment infrastructure that connects traditional banking and blockchain rails while managing the financial licenses, partner bank relationships and local settlement integrations behind them. Since launching its API in 2025, Mural says it has processed $2.1 billion in payments across 128 countries. The company plans to place more engineers directly with enterprise clients to address jurisdiction-specific regulatory and banking requirements. Its platform also uses a policy and compliance engine to apply controls such as approved counterparty lists, transfer caps and additional approvals for large transactions. Mural counts Deel, Opera and Axexo among its enterprise clients. The financing comes as research cited in the verified data points to substantial stablecoin payment activity, although the available figures measure different periods and types of flows. Mural did not disclose a valuation for the round.

Oct. 23, 2026 • 2 min read

Project Agorá completed a controlled real-value testing phase in late July 2026, processing approximately 800,000 Swiss francs across 30 live transactions in six currencies. The project records tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves on a shared programmable ledger, with an average initiation-to-settlement time of about 80 seconds. The Bank of Canada has joined as its eighth participating central bank, while commercial financial institutions are taking on deeper operational testing responsibilities. Convened by the Bank for International Settlements and the Institute of International Finance, Agorá is examining a model for cross-border payments that preserves the roles of commercial and central bank money. BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos argued in August that stablecoins lack the institutional credibility and singleness of money needed for systemic settlement. The tests demonstrate live transactions, but conflicting participant counts and uncertainty about the US dollar settlement leg limit broader conclusions about the project’s results.

Oct. 20, 2026 • 3 min read