The problem
Every bank and fintech in the region could see customers wanting crypto and stablecoins, but offering them legally meant securing licences, building custody, and standing up compliance — a multi-year project outside most institutions’ core skills.
How it works
Fuze operates the regulated middle layer: partner banks, fintechs, and enterprises plug its infrastructure into their native apps and offer digital-asset products to their own customers. Fuze handles the specialist burden — build-out, compliance alignment with regulators, and the trading and custody connections — while the partner owns the customer relationship.
Pain points
Long licensing timelines, custody and security risk that boards fear, fragmented regional liquidity, and product roadmaps stalled because no off-the-shelf compliant rails existed.
Business model
Institutional infrastructure economics: Fuze monetises the digital-asset volume and product usage its partners push through its rails, expanding across banks, fintechs, and traditional enterprises in MENA and Turkey.
Challenges
Partner demand tracks crypto cycles; staying compliant across every market it enters is expensive and never finished; and Fuze sits between giant global infrastructure providers on one side and banks tempted to build in-house on the other.
Funding
- Raised: $12.2M Series A (May 2025) led by Galaxy and e& Capital, to expand across MENA, Turkey, and India plus product and compliance hiring.
- Earlier: $14M Seed (Sep 2023) led by Abu Dhabi-based Further Ventures with Liberty City Ventures — reported as the largest seed round for a MENA digital-assets startup at the time.
Latest — May 2025
On 1 May 2025 Fuze announced the $12.2M Series A led by Galaxy with e& Capital, taking total funding past $26M and positioning the Abu Dhabi-headquartered firm as one of the best-funded regulated crypto-infrastructure startups in the region.