2024 Product Recap

2024 was the year crypto made its comeback.

Bitcoin broke $100k. The US geared up for massive regulatory advances. Stripe completed the industry’s largest-ever acquisition, purchasing fellow stablecoin fintech Bridge for $1.1 billion.

Most exciting for Rail was seeing global stablecoin transfer volumes exceeding $30 trillion in 2024. This further demonstrates that stablecoins have found product-market fit, cementing themselves as the future of payments.

At Rail, we felt this momentum firsthand. We rebranded from Layer2 Financial to Rail, reinforcing our commitment to making instant global payments accessible to every business, everywhere. We secured $10.7 million in Series A funding, enabling us to continue building the most reliable, scalable infrastructure for cross-border payments.

As we look ahead to 2025, our team is more focused than ever on solving the challenges of global payments. This year’s roadmap is only made possible thanks to a productive 2024. Let’s take a look back at what we built in 2024, paving the way for a big year ahead.

TLDR – Key New Features:

• Named USD Accounts - Released named USD accounts allowing customers to transact in and out of USD bank account in their own name.
• Named EUR/GBP Accounts - Launched named EUR and GBP accounts, enabling EUR/GBP on ramps & USD collections to EUR/GBP payouts.
• Stablecoin-EUR/GBP Trading Pairs - In addition to EUR and GBP accounts, Rail now supports converting from EUR and GBP to a range of stablecoins across a variety of blockchains.
• Coverage and Redundancy - Continued expansion of our ecosystem of partners, means Rail can service a wider array of customers and provide superior redundancy.
• RFQs & OTC Desk - Rail launched new exchange products including an RFQ system and OTC desk to support various use cases. 

Onboarding:

• New Applications List API - We released an API that allows clients retrieve a full list of applications they have created with Rail. Clients can filter results by application type, customer name, and other criteria.
• Other Document Types - Clients can upload additional documents to an application that may not fall under the existing set of document types e.g. INCORPORATION_DOCUMENTS. These generic document types are useful to provide additional context to applications or to share existing KYB/KYC results.

Accounts:

• Named USD accounts - Released named USD accounts allowing customers to transact in and out of a USD account in their own name. Customers can fund their own accounts in addition to make and receive 3rd party payments.
• Named EUR/GBP accounts - Clients can create named EUR and GBP accounts in the names of their end customers. Regarding exchanges, we released stablecoin-EUR/GBP trading pairs. More on EUR/GBP named accounts here.
• Enhanced Stablecoin Support - We extended our stablecoin offering by providing support for more stablecoins across more blockchains including Polygon, Solana and Tron.

Exchanges:

• OTC Desk - Rail launched our OTC desk to provide liquidity to clients with large or unique exchange requirements. Clients can enjoy better rates through this venue for larger trade clips.
• New RFQ Product - We released our RFQ product that allows clients ‘lock in’ exchange rates when making conversions. This allows clients create experiences where customers don’t have to worry about getting unexpected exchange rates, different from what they originally be quoted.
• Stablecoin-EUR/GBP Trading Pairs - In addition to EUR and GBP accounts, Rail now supports converting from EUR and GBP to a range of stablecoins across a variety of blockchains.

Operations & Transactions:

• Transaction Rail Information - Clients can now see additional transaction info related to the rails on which deposits and withdrawals are executed. Clients can see the ‘reference’ which is the unique identifier for the transaction. This can be a transaction hash for crypto transaction or the IMAD/OMAD for fiat transactions. Additionally, clients can read the ‘memo’ attached to fiat transactions.
• US Domestic Swifts - Rail now offers the ability for customers to make withdrawal between 2 US banks using the Swift network.

Counterparties:

• Generic Counterparties - Rail added new counterparty types - FIAT_IBAN and FIAT_ACCNO - that clients can use to make international Swift withdrawals. FIAT_IBAN to be used if the counterparty’s bank account has an IBAN. FIAT_ACCNO to be used if the counterparty’s bank account has an account number not an IBAN.

Notifications (Webhooks):

• Event History and Management - We added a new Subscriptions section to the management UI that allows clients review all events (webhooks) sent to them by Rail. Clients can resend events from the UI.
  
• New Event Type: ACCOUNT_DEPOSIT_INSTRUCTIONS_UPDATE - Clients can now subscribe to a new accounts event type that allows clients get updated in real time if the deposit instructions of an account ever get updated.

Management UI:

• Performance and Usability Upgrades - We made a number of improvements across the Management UI to improve the overall UX of the portal. These include: better pagination and more filtering options.