Code Announces $6.5 Million Seed Round to Accelerate the Growth of a New Global Payments Platform

Today we’re excited to share that Code has raised $6.5 million in a seed round financing from top venture firms M13 and Union Square Ventures, as well as participation from Balaji Srinivasan, Roham Gharegozlou, Anatoly Yakovenko, Raj Gokal, Mert Mumtaz, and others to help accelerate the growth of our new global payments platform.

Background

Code was founded by Ted Livingston who is the founder and former CEO of Kik, one of the most popular chat apps in the world with over 100 million users. It was while building Kik that it became obvious to us that the world needed a new payments platform.

People all over the world are connecting online to share ideas, create content, and grow communities, but only a small fraction are getting paid for their contributions. That’s not because there isn’t value in these contributions. It’s because existing payments platforms can’t support payments of less than a dollar.

But what if we could empower anyone in the world to charge as little as $0.05 for anything they create online? That would enable a writer in Nebraska to charge $0.25 for one of their blog posts, or a fitness instructor in Brazil to charge $0.75 for one of their workouts, or a teenager in Kenya to charge $0.50 for an AI generated image, and get paid from anyone in the world.

That’s the platform we’ve built with Code.

For decades this has seemed impossible because of technical and business model constraints, but with the emergence of performant, low-cost self-custodial blockchain technology we can now deliver a seamless payments experience for everyone around the world. Now, for the first time ever, we can unlock the earning potential of online creators who have been left out. We believe that is powerful.

An early version of Code was launched in 2023 out of a not-for-profit organization funded by proceeds from the sale of Kik Messenger. This early version received strong feedback for its compelling user experience, sophisticated technical infrastructure, and elegant developer tools.

Consistent with its mission to drive global financial inclusion and a desire to accelerate the future of payments, the not-for-profit organization open sourced all of its work in November of 2023. The Code team then formed a new company to build this next generation payments platform while continuing to make contributions to the open source codebase.

What's Next

We believe the timing could not be better. There is more creative output around the world than ever before. The missing piece to unlock the true potential of the online economy has been a payments platform like Code.

We’ve laid the foundation with a proven product built by a seasoned team. This investment from some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the world now gives us the resources and strategic partnerships to accelerate the growth of this new payments platform.

This is the future of payments the world has been waiting for. If you want to see and feel the experience for yourself go to getcode.com.