Today’s Startup

Blaze

(blaze.money)

Blaze

What the company does

Blaze is basically a global Venmo for cross-border payments.

  • It’s a peer-to-peer payments app that uses USDC (a U.S. dollar stablecoin) under the hood so people can send money instantly and with very low fees between countries.
  • They’re focused on digital nomads, expats, and remote workers who need to pay rent, tutors, freelancers, or friends in another country without the usual bank friction.
  • The app has a social payments feed (like Venmo) plus features like payment links for freelancers and vendors, and support for 34+ countries across North and Latin America (and expanding).

In short: send and receive money globally, nearly free, from your phone, in a very consumer-friendly UI.

Why we like it

Clear, painful problem

Cross-border payments are still a mess: slow, expensive, and confusing. Blaze is going after a real, daily pain for people who live/work between countries (exactly the kind of focused use case investors like).

Strong, credible wedge

Their wedge is USDC + P2P + social: stablecoin rails for speed and cost, wrapped in a simple “Venmo-style” app. That combo is much easier to explain to normal users than “open a crypto wallet and manage addresses.”

Founder–problem fit

The founders are literally international nomads who struggled with this themselves; they’ve built and scaled startups before (including one to $1M ARR and a #1 App Store hit) and have backgrounds at Spotify, Artsy, Bitpanda, etc. That’s a good mix of product, design, and fintech experience.

YC + solid early traction

They’re a YC S24 company, already live in the US and Mexico with thousands of users, and actively hiring—nice signals for momentum without being “too big” yet.