Blaze is Global Venmo for cross border payments. We combine the UX of Venmo with the speed, global reach, and low cost of USDC. If you're a Californian nomad living in Mexico City, you can use Blaze to pay rent to your Mexican landlord. And if you're an expat living in Colombia, you can use Blaze to pay your Spanish teacher for classes. 

In addition to P2P, we're also enabling a network of travel-related businesses to accept payments on Blaze and reach our customer base of global citizens. For example, a Travel Concierge business in Jamaica can accept payments on Blaze from her US customers coming to visit for the summer.

During a 6 month stint traveling around Asia, Faiyam experienced first hand the frustrations of paying people from different countries. Luc was experiencing the same in his travels around Latin America. Fees were exorbitant, apps that worked for one person didn't work for the other, and the user experiences were cumbersome.

Enter Blaze. 

Cross-border P2P payments is projected to be a $9T market by 2030. Our long term vision is that you should be able to drop in to any country on the planet and pay anyone you meet simply, quickly, and affordably. It's easy to send an sms to anyone anywhere in the world without thinking about where they're from. We want to do the same with payments. 

The advent of consumer friendly blockchain tech, especially stablecoins, presents a unique opportunity to do this. The legacy financial system stitches together otherwise siloed country-specific systems to handle cross-border payments. Blockchain has no such notion of a border in the first place. As such the present moment is a unique, generational opportunity to rewrite the rules of global finance. 

Faiyam studied Math at Duke and engineering at Cornell before building a $1M ARR company with Luc. Luc’s a former technical lead at Spotify and Artsy, who studied Engineering at NYU and has cofounded 2 VC-backed startups, one that hit #1 in app store and got him sued by Drake. Igor led design at Bitpanda, Austria’s first unicorn.

Global Venmo for cross border payments
Title: Blaze: Global Venmo for cross border payments | Y Combinator

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### Global Venmo for cross border payments

Blaze (YC S24) is global Venmo for cross border payments. It's a peer to peer payments app that uses USDC to make payments fast and cheap between any two people anywhere in the world. The founders scaled their last startup to $1M in ARR, studied mathematics and engineering at Duke, NYU, and Cornell, and have led teams at Spotify, Artsy, and Bitpanda. They're live in the US and Mexico, available for download on iOS and Android: 



Blaze

Founded:2023

Team Size:5

Location:Mexico City, Mexico

### Active Founders

### Faiyam Rahman, Founder

Faiyam is a full-stack engineer with a bachelors in mathematics from Duke and a masters of engineering from Cornell Tech. He is now the cofounder and CEO of Blaze Payments. He is an avid traveler, most recently having completed a 6 month tour of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bali and Portugal. He is also an avid practitioner of yoga and meditation, and he enjoys long walks, the spoken word, and celebrating the joy of being alive.



### Luc Succès, Founder

Luc is a 2 time VC backed founder. His first startup, Often, launched a keyboard app that enabled you to text your friends with Drake lyrics. Upon launch, Often blew up to #1 on the App Store and got over 400k downloads. He scaled his second startup Seasons, a rental service for high end menswear to $1mm in ARR. Luc is a seasoned tech leader, having led teams at Artsy & Spotify. He is also an avid traveler, having lived and worked in over 50 countries worldwide.



### Igor Zagnienski, Founder

Igor holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from the School of Economics and Law in Kielce. Prior to Blaze, he co-founded Space Individuals, a top-tier job site dedicated to the space industry. Adding to his diverse experience, he was a Senior Designer at Bitpanda, Austria's first billion dollar tech success.



### Company Launches

[### Blaze - Global Venmo for cross border payments](

**TL;DR**: Blaze is building a global Venmo for cross-border payments. For example, if you're a Californian nomad living in Mexico City, you can use Blaze to pay rent to your local landlord. Or if you're an expat living in Colombia, you can use Blaze to pay your teacher for Spanish classes. Check [**us out**]( on iOS and Android!

A [quick intro]( for you:

A little over a year ago, we found ourselves traveling all over the world. Luc was spending time between Mexico, Colombia, and other parts of South America, while Faiyam was nomad-ing around Asia. Everywhere we went, it was a pain to transact with our new friends from other countries. We found ourselves wanting a Venmo like experience that worked for our international lives.

So we decided to build it. Blaze is the payments app we wanted for our own lives, and if you have a lot of international contacts, perhaps it is for you too.



_from left to right:_

💻 [Luc]( studied engineering at NYU before going on to start 2 VC-backed startups, one of which went to #1 on the app store and got him sued by Drake (true story). He’s also been a tech lead at Spotify and Artsy, and has lived and worked in over 50 countries worldwide.

🧘‍♂️ [Faiyam]( studied mathematics at Duke, then engineering at Cornell before going on to build a $1M ARR business with Luc at his 2nd startup. He’s also an avid practitioner of yoga and meditation.

🧑‍🎨 [Igor]( is a former lead designer at BitPanda, Austria’s first unicorn. Prior to that, he spent his time jumping out of planes and running Space Individuals, one of Europe’s leading platforms to find jobs in Space.

📱 **App Preview**
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**🙏 Asks**
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*   Help us beta test! [**Download**]( on iOS and Android. You can share feedback at [founders@blaze.money](mailto:founders@blaze.money).
*   **Share this post!** If you know someone with an international lifestyle who would want to use Blaze, please share this post with them.
*   **Connect us with** **businesses** in travel, hospitality, or other spaces that could use help with cross-border payments.

#### YC Sign Photo



#### Company Photo


