Introducing Cyclops: The Stablecoin & Crypto Platform Built for Payments Companies

With years of experience and millions in backing, Cyclops is pouring fuel on the stablecoin fire.

Today, we're launching Cyclops - the crypto and stablecoin infrastructure platform purpose-built for the payments industry. Whether you’re a payments service provider (PSP), a merchant acquirer, a card network, or any type of payment processor, Cyclops is the platform that empowers you to offer crypto and stablecoin capabilities without becoming a crypto company.

We raised an $8M seed round to launch the platform. Here’s the story behind Cyclops… 

The Inflection Point

Stablecoins and crypto are taking the payments industry by storm. Look to Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shift4 and other payment leaders. You can’t make it through an earnings call or an annual letter without seeing stablecoins mentioned. 

If you work in payments, you understand that when it comes to crypto and stablecoins, the industry is ready. GENIUS and MiCA gave the regulatory nod to an industry that has been chomping at the bit to grow their bottom line and gain a competitive advantage. Customers are asking for it, leadership is ready and the underlying technology is proven. And yet, very little is getting done. 

Beyond a handful of industry leaders, the vast majority of companies we’ve talked to feel that they aren’t able to execute fast enough with the infrastructure out there right now. 

Taking the mean of the conversations we’ve had, the average PSP’s digital asset story has gone as follows:

• A small number of high value merchants began asking for stablecoin settlement and crypto payments years ago. 

• The PSP slow-played exploration of the options due to regulatory uncertainty

• Regulatory clarity came and, with it, a surge in requests from merchants for these offerings

• PSP attempts to play catch up and build the offerings quickly

• Even the most “turnkey” infrastructure options turned out to require intensive work and multiple partners

• They end up racking their brains saying, “how do we actually get to the finish line?”

The industry had reached an inflection point. Demand was high from merchants and consumers, payments companies were ready to execute and, yet, the purpose-built infrastructure was not there.

This is not just a story we heard. This was our story. This is the story that inspired us to create Cyclops. 

We did it the hard way, so you don’t have to

We spent the last 4 years leading the crypto team at Shift4. Before that, we spent 5 years building a crypto payments platform of our own. The reason Shift4 is so ahead of most of the industry on crypto payments and stablecoin settlement is because they made the investments and prioritized accordingly.

We’re proud of the way we were able to work hand in hand with the Shift4 leadership and partners to make this happen. However, there is no good reason it should have taken the combination of previous crypto technology founders, a dedicated in-house product and engineering team, numerous infrastructure partners and years of work to make it happen. We were fortunate to have a dream-team of innovators led by a brilliant billionaire astronaut fighter-jet pilot. It’s great if you’re writing a movie. But adding stablecoin settlement options for merchants shouldn’t feel like the Manhattan Project.

We tried it all. And, eventually, we got there. But we want to bring an end to the era of herculean efforts to implement what ought to be table-stakes technology. 

What’s Different About Cyclops?

We build purpose-built category kings, not mass-market mediocrity.

In our previous venture, The Giving Block (TGB), we built our identity as the industry leader first by doing the hard, high-quality, unscalable work that guaranteed the best outcomes possible for a smaller number of early stage clients. Once we did whatever it took to make TGB undeniably better than every other option, only then did we rapidly scale the business into the juggernaut it eventually became. We didn’t just provide our clients with a “Donate Crypto” form:

• We built integrations into all their tools and CRMs

• We updated their website menus to improve discoverability

• We search engine optimized their pages to get them found online

• We met with their finance and accounting teams to organize their processes

• We educated them on tax documentation

• We wrote copy for them to engage with their donors about crypto

• We offered support directly to donors so our clients wouldn’t have to

• We built an aggregator with client profiles so donors could find the clients who didn’t have capacity to update their own websites

• We ran our own separate fundraising campaigns for clients that raised tens of millions of dollars annually

• We hired fundraising strategists in house to help clients fundraise crypto effectively

Cyclops is going to run the same playbook. 

Cyclops is built from the ground up by payments executives to meet the very specific requirements of payments companies. Payments is not merely a vertical for Cyclops. Payments is our only and entire focus. The name Cyclops embodies our singular purpose.

The unique requirements of payments companies are built into everything we do, from the first stage of onboarding, through the product design, to support services, to reconciliation and reporting.  You will not be completing documentation and leveraging APIs developed for banks. Every product and every process will be purpose-built for your payments company and your use-cases. 

Get Started: We’re Signing Early Adopters Now

Today, Cyclops is live and already serving Shift4. This launch is the first time we are opening our doors to the rest of the payments industry. We want to make something incredibly clear as part of this launch - we are not going to work with everybody. 

Over the last few years, we lived through the pain of working with platforms who updated their website copy to say they were turnkey when they weren’t. The pain of working with platforms who work with hundreds or thousands of clients simultaneously without truly being ready to meaningfully support them. Cyclops is the antidote to those who overpromise and underdeliver.

If you’re interested in working with us on stablecoin and crypto use cases, you can contact us here to get the exploration process started with our team. Those who do will have the pleasure of leading the payments industry on stablecoins and crypto.