Indian fintech startup Xflow has secured the backing of Stripe and PayPal Ventures in a $16.6 million funding round. The investment comes as the company works to strengthen its position in cross-border B2B payments, a market still dominated by banking 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 investment round values the Bengaluru-based startup at $85 million post-investment and takes its total funding to date to over $32 million.
Despite the rapid digitization of domestic payments, cross-border B2B transfers for Indian exporters remain heavily dependent on banks, often with limited visibility into fees, payment schedules and final amounts received in rupees. These frictions are particularly acute for large exporters who move millions of dollars to India to finance salaries and local operations, creating opportunities for fintech infrastructure players like Xflow that improve the transparency and speed of international fund movements.
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 clear funds in India.
“Cross-border B2B payments were stuck in a different era than UPI,” co-founder Anand Balaji (pictured above, center) said in an interview, referring to Unified Payments Interface, a widely used domestic instant payments network in India.
Balaji, who previously helped build 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 had enabled Indian businesses to collect payments in more than 25 currencies from more than 100 countries. Balaji told TechCrunch that annual cross-border payments reached about $1 billion last year, about 10 times growth compared to the same period in 2024.
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According to the company, its customer base has expanded to around 15,000 businesses encompassing SaaS companies, global competency centers (offshore operations operated in India by multinational companies), IT services exporters, freelancers and fintech platforms.
According to Balaji, deal sizes vary widely by sector, with global competency centers averaging around $1 million to $2 million per deal, commodity exporters around $30,000 to $40,000 and freelancers around $3,000.
Xflow positions itself as a payments infrastructure provider rather than a direct payments application, offering APIs that allow platforms and exporters to incorporate cross-border fund movements into their own products.
“We didn’t want to create the next Wise. We wanted to support the next thousands of Wise,” Balaji said.
The startup has also introduced an AI-based foreign exchange tool to help finance teams optimize the timing of currency conversions. Xflow says this feature has created incremental benefits for some of its customers through data-driven forex decisions.
This tool allows businesses to set target conversion rates instead of accepting generic bank quotes. Balaji likened the ability to limit orders in trading, i.e. instructions to buy or sell only at a specified price.
“What we’ve added is a prediction layer and the ability to actually set a constraint order,” he said. Balaji said the model currently provides three-day forecasts with about 92% confidence, but TechCrunch could not independently verify that number.
Xflow still faces competition from banks, which dominate large-scale cross-border B2B transfers, and fintech companies such as Wise, Payoneer and Skydo in the downstream market. But Balaji said the startup’s focus on high-value transactions and API-based infrastructure sets it apart from many of its competitors.
Balaji said the startup plans to deploy the new capital to build additional products on top of its core payments infrastructure and secure regulatory licenses in new markets. Xflow is preparing to launch import capabilities in the coming months and is pursuing licenses in markets including Singapore, and already has a payments license in Canada, although it continues to focus on India as a key market.
Xflow also said it has received final approval from the Reserve Bank of India for its Payment Aggregator-Cross Border (PA-CB) license, which covers both exports and imports. The startup has signed platform partnerships with Easebuzz and Drip Capital to include cross-border functionality in its product.
Balaji said the support from Stripe and PayPal Ventures has helped strengthen its credibility with banking and regulatory partners while continuing to work commercially with multiple payment service providers.
The startup currently has around 65 employees as it expands its cross-border infrastructure business.
