A startup called Nodu has raised $1.45 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Digital Space Ventures, as it aims to modernise Europe’s cross-border payment rails amid a global stablecoin market estimated at $10 trillion.
Moving money across borders is still harder than it should be.
Payments can feel instant inside one country, but the moment money has to cross borders, things slow down. Fees creep in. Settlement takes days. Banks rely on old correspondent networks that were never designed for real-time, global commerce.
Stablecoins are often presented as the fix. In theory, they allow money to move almost instantly, at low cost, and without the usual banking delays. In reality, especially in Europe, using stablecoins inside regulated finance has been complicated.
That is starting to change.
Nodu is a London-based company with roots in Latvia, intends to use funding to build stablecoin infrastructure designed specifically for European rules.
Nodu offers banks, fintechs and businesses a ready-made, regulated framework that lets them send, receive and hold stablecoins as easily as traditional money, while handling compliance and reporting in the background and linking fiat and crypto systems into a single flow.
The company is positioning itself as a local alternative to US-based providers like Zerohash and Bridge, which already play an important role in stablecoin payments in North America.
The timing matters. Europe’s new crypto rulebook, known as MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation), is moving stablecoins out of the grey zone and into formal financial regulation.
MiCA is the European Union’s first comprehensive law governing crypto assets. MiCA is the EU’s attempt to pull crypto into the regulated financial system, rather than letting it sit outside the rules that apply to banks, payments, and capital markets.
Before MiCA, crypto regulation in Europe was fragmented. Each country applied its own interpretations, and many activities sat in legal grey zones. MiCA replaces that patchwork with a single EU-wide framework.
Once fully in force, a crypto business licensed in one EU country can operate across all 27 member states under the same rules, a system known as passporting.
MiCA is designed to address three core issues, the first one being the legal uncertainty because crypto firms, banks, and investors often did not know which rules applied, or whether rules applied at all.
The second issue is the consumer and market risk because high-profile collapses and stablecoin failures raised concerns about investor protection, market manipulation, and financial stability.
Last but not least the systemic relevance of stablecoins, as stablecoins started to resemble payment systems rather than speculative assets, regulators became concerned about their scale and influence.
MiCA treats crypto not as an experiment, but as financial infrastructure that could affect the real economy.
Stablecoins sound simple until regulation enters the picture
The idea behind stablecoins is easy to explain. They are digital tokens, usually pegged to currencies like the euro or the dollar, that can be transferred quickly over blockchain networks. No bank opening hours. No waiting days for settlement.
But for banks and payment firms in Europe, speed is only part of the story. They also have to deal with strict requirements around customer checks, anti-money laundering rules, reporting, and licences. Plugging directly into crypto systems is not something most regulated institutions can do lightly.
MiCA changes that environment. It brings clarity, but it also raises expectations. Stablecoin activity now has to fit neatly inside Europe’s regulatory framework. That makes the technology safer to touch and more complex to implement.
This is the gap Nodu is trying to fill.
Nodu was founded in 2025 by Alex Novozhenov, Vladislav Nikolayev, and Daria Dubinina, a team that previously built Crassula, a European fintech platform that processed hundreds of billions of euros in payments for more than 150 clients.
Their experience exposed a recurring problem. Banks and fintechs were curious about digital assets, but unsure how to use them without taking on regulatory or technical risk.
Instead of creating a new stablecoin, Nodu is building the infrastructure around them. Its platform lets banks and payment companies send, receive, and hold stablecoins in a way that feels similar to traditional money. Compliance checks, reporting, and monitoring are handled in the background.
Rather than building a full crypto stack from scratch or applying for new licences, institutions can integrate through Nodu’s APIs. Fiat and blockchain payments are combined into a single, regulated flow.
One practical feature is the company’s off-ramp, which allows stablecoin balances to be paid out as local currency in more than 100 countries. For many businesses, converting digital value back into fiat remains one of the hardest parts of using stablecoins at scale.
Why Europe wants its own solution
Much of today’s stablecoin infrastructure has been built in the US, shaped by American regulations and banking relationships. That works well for global crypto firms, but it does not always line up with Europe’s regulatory approach.
MiCA makes that mismatch more visible. European banks and fintechs increasingly need infrastructure that is designed for EU rules from the start, not adapted later.
That is why regional players like Nodu are emerging. As regulation tightens, compliance stops being just a legal concern and starts to shape the technology itself.
Nodu says it wants to connect more than 170 countries into a single payment network, using stablecoins as the link between currencies and systems. That goal is ambitious, and still some way off. But the direction reflects a broader shift: Europe wants stablecoin rails it can control and understand.
In a statement included with the announcement, Andrei Popov, managing partner at Digital Space Ventures, said regulations like MiCA are bringing clarity, while banks and fintechs are actively looking for partners to connect traditional finance with stablecoins.
That combination, regulatory certainty and institutional demand, is what turns stablecoins from a curiosity into real infrastructure.
Nodu plans to use the new funding to expand its global coverage, hire more engineers and compliance specialists, and build closer relationships with banks and fintechs testing digital assets.
As regulation settles, the focus is shifting away from flashy tokens and towards plumbing. And in Europe, that plumbing is being built with rules in mind from day one.
