Rain CEO Says More Than 100,000 Merchants Receive Stablecoin Payments Without Knowing It

Stablecoins are increasingly moving through existing payment networks rather than forcing merchants to change checkout flows, and Rain CEO Farooq Malik says that is already happening at scale. For PSPs and acquirers, the point is not just new rails; it is the ability to cut cost and keep the merchant experience looking exactly the same.

1. Malik told The Block that many merchants do not know they are receiving stablecoin payments, and that Rain currently routes those payments through Visa’s payment network in about three days. According to Malik, more than 100,000 merchants are already receiving those payments without knowing they are stablecoin payments.
2. In a separate interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, Malik said the current wave of stablecoin innovation is less about launching consumer-facing apps and more about embedding stablecoins into existing networks. In practice, that means payment service providers can preserve the merchant-facing flow while reducing their own operational costs, banks can use tokenized dollars to balance intraday liquidity, and multinationals can reduce friction in intercompany transfers.
3. Rain’s thesis, as Malik put it, is to give stablecoin-native users a stablecoin-native experience while upgrading everyone else invisibly. He said card networks have already “figured out” the risk shift framework, chargeback modality, and dispute adjudication, and that Rain’s underlying account and authorization infrastructure supports chargebacks and refunds under the same protections a merchant would expect from a payment card.
4. Malik also said “the easiest way to upgrade or increase adoption is by making it look and feel the same.” For high-risk operators, that matters because payment change is often the real adoption barrier: if the rails move but the checkout does not, merchants are more willing to switch, and PSPs can introduce stablecoin settlement without retraining the entire commercial stack.
5. Rain raised $58 million in a Series B in August 2025 to expand its global stablecoin infrastructure platform and services, five months after its Series A, bringing total funding to $88.5 million. At the time, Rain said its technology was being used by enterprises, neobanks, platforms and developers to move, store and use stablecoins through global payment cards, on/offramps, wallets and cross-border rails.

Rain said the Series B arrived as enterprise interest in stablecoins surged after the passage of the GENIUS Act in the United States and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework in Europe. Malik summed up the company’s position bluntly: “Stablecoins are shifting to the backbone of global commerce.”