Atum, a San Francisco-based startup, has emerged from stealth with $13.5 million in seed funding led by Variant, with participation from PayPal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Road Capital, Mirana Ventures, First Commit, Credibly Neutral, and strategic advisor Charlie Songhurst. Atum operates an open payments network that acts as a coordination layer, handling authorization, routing, and confirmation between payment initiators and competing settlement providers without issuing a currency, operating a blockchain, or taking custody of funds, and it supports both stablecoin payments and agentic payments through protocols including x402 and MPP. The main objective is to give card issuers and acquirers, payment service providers, card networks, wallets, fintechs, and enterprises a neutral way to move money across currencies, blockchains, and payment rails, with support for reversible payments and identity features. Key players include Atum founder and CEO Pete Cooling, a former head of crypto product at Visa, and lead investor Variant.
Atum Raises $13.5M to Launch the Open Payments Network for Global Stablecoin Movement
