Atum Emerges from Stealth with The Open Payments Network for Global Money Movement

EmitenTrust.com Atum raises $13.5m to build the world's first open payments network.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Atum today emerged from stealth having built the open payments network, a first of its kind, for global money movement. Atum connects payment companies, developers, and enterprises through a single coordination layer, without issuing a currency, operating a blockchain, favoring a rail, or taking custody of customer funds. The company is launching with $13.5 million of funding from Variant, PayPal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Road Capital, Mirana Ventures, First Commit, Credibly Neutral, and strategic advisor Charlie Songhurst.

Payments are fragmented across currencies, chains, apps, and local rails that do not interoperate, and every handoff adds cost, delay, and complexity. Stablecoins offer fast, low-cost global rails, but are spread across many blockchains, which pushes that complexity onto users. Atum is the coordination layer between them. Any integrator, developer, or application can submit a payment request, while settlement providers compete to fulfill the payments across any supported chain and stablecoin, with native authorization, reversible payments, and identity. Senders specify what they will send; receivers get what they asked to receive.

Atum is incentivized only by volume, and connects participants through a marketplace where settlement providers compete to fulfill each payment. That structure is what makes the network credibly neutral: its interests are aligned with everyone building on it. It is an open-loop payments and commerce platform.

The network serves businesses moving money: card issuers and acquirers, payment service providers, card networks, stablecoin orchestrators, wallets, fintechs, and enterprises—plus developers building on top. Atum supports financial institutions and stablecoin card issuers, for both non-agentic stablecoin payments and agentic payments through agentic protocols including x402 and MPP. Both humans and agents are completing payments on Atum today.

"This is my life's work," said Pete Cooling, founder and CEO of Atum. "In 2014 I saw that blockchains were payments networks, and everything since has pointed to the same conclusion. Onchain accounts are the future bank accounts, and new infrastructure is needed to make money move more seamlessly than it does today. Atum is that infrastructure."

Cooling formerly led the crypto product team at Visa and has been researching and building blockchain-based payments systems over the past decade. He served as Visa's representative on Linux's OpenWallet Foundation, helping guide standards for digital wallets across identity, financial accounts, payment cards, and stablecoins.

Atum is open to builders today in at atum.xyz

About Atum

Atum is the open payments network for global money movement. Atum connects payment companies, developers, and enterprises through a unified coordination layer that handles authorization, routing, and confirmation without being a counterparty and without taking custody. Atum issues no currency, runs no blockchain, favors no rail, and doesn't compete with any participant on its network. Learn more at atum.xyz.

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SOURCE Atum