Xflowan 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 works to carve out 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, with PayPal Ventures joining as a new backer. The all-equity round values the Bengaluru-based startup at $85 million post-investment and brings its total funding to more than $32 million to date.
Despite rapid digitization in domestic paymentscross-border B2B transport for Indian exporters they are still heavily dependent on banksoften with limited visibility into charges, settlement timelines and the final amount received in rupees. The friction is particularly acute for larger exporters that move millions of dollars to India to finance wages and local operations, creating an opening for fintech infrastructure players like Xflow that promise greater transparency and speed in international money movement.
Founded in 2021, Xflow provides cross-border payments infrastructure for businesses ranging from exporters and SaaS companies to platforms and freelancers, enabling them to collect international payments, manage foreign exchange and settle funds in India.
“B2B cross-border payments were stuck in a different era compared to UPI,” co-founder Anand Balaji (pictured above, center) said in an interview, referring to India’s widely used domestic direct payments network, Unified Payments Interface.
Balaji, who previously helped grow Stripe’s India business, 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 receive 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 10-fold increase from 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 covering SaaS companies, global competence centers (which are offshore units operated by MNCs in India), IT service exporters, freelancers and fintech platforms.
Deal sizes vary widely by segment, with global competency centers averaging about $1 million to $2 million per deal, commodity exporters about $30,000 to $40,000 and freelancers about $3,000, according to Balaji.
Xflow positions itself as a payment infrastructure provider rather than a direct payment application, offering APIs that allow platforms and exporters to integrate cross-border money movement into their own products.
“We didn’t want to make the next Sage – we want to feed the next Thousand Sages,” Balaji said.
The startup also introduced an AI-powered foreign exchange tool to help finance teams optimize the timing of currency conversions. Xflow says the feature has created incremental profits for some clients through data-driven forex decisions.
The tool allows businesses to set target conversion rates rather than accepting prevailing bank rates. Balaji likened the feature to limit orders in trading — instructions to buy or sell only at a specified price.
“What we’ve added is the level of prediction and the ability to actually define a limit series,” he said. The model currently provides a three-day forecast with about 92 percent confidence, Balaji said, though TechCrunch could not independently verify that figure.
Xflow faces competition from banks that 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. However, Balaji said the startup’s focus on high-value transactions and API-based infrastructure differentiates it from many competitors.
The startup plans to deploy the new capital to build additional products on top of its core payments infrastructure and secure regulatory approvals in new markets, Balaji said. Xflow is preparing to roll out import capabilities in the coming months and is seeking licenses in markets including Singapore, and already has a payments license in Canada, although it remains focused on India as its main market.
Xflow said it has also received final authorization from the Reserve Bank of India for a Payment Aggregator–Cross Border (PA-CB) license covering both exports and imports. The startup has signed platform partnerships with Easebuzz and Drip Capital to integrate its cross-border capabilities into their offerings.
Backing from Stripe and PayPal Ventures, Balaji said, has helped strengthen the startup’s credibility with banking and regulatory partners, even as it continues to work commercially with many payment providers.
The startup currently has around 65 employees as it scales its cross-border infrastructure.
