The world is becoming increasingly volatile, with rising political instability, globalization, isolationism and economic uncertainty. As time goes on, every company – commerce, manufacturing, payments, travel, infrastructure – becomes an international one by default. However, companies are not in the business of understanding macroeconomic trends and de-risking foreign exposures; they just want to run their operations and sell to customers (wherever they might be located).

As a direct result, foreign exchange (FX)/cross-border payments are set for rapid growth over the next 7 years – projected to grow to $290T from $190T today (53 percent over that timeframe). E-commerce traffic is a significant contributor, nearing 300 billion cross-border transactions annually. The chart below shows the percentage of e-commerce transactions that are subject to some form of cross-border currency exchange – estimated to grow from 20% in 2021 to 58% by 2028.

With this growth comes increasing complexity and cost for global businesses: How do you manage, operationalize and hedge your increasingly global and volatile basket of currencies? The answer isn't to hire more people, run more manual processes or sacrifice underlying margin. Or worse, to pass price increases to users to offset these increasing costs.

That’s where Grain comes in with an all-in-one solution for companies to manage their FX. An easily integrated, API-forward product, Grain enables businesses to no longer need to worry about the complex world of global payments and currency volatility. Their AI-powered solution not only eliminates complexity, but also enables revenue and finance leaders to intelligently price their products in an FX-forward manner — turning this operational pain point into a revenue driver for companies.

A decade ago, FX management was a footnote for a company's finance team. With increasing FX volume (and risk), it is quickly becoming a top priority; escalating from finance departments to C-Suites and board rooms. Built to analyze transaction-specific data, Grain’s technology seamlessly integrates directly into B2B software platforms, marketplaces and payment providers – streamlining global transactions with minimal friction and risk from the jump.

Co-Founder & CEO Dor Golan summarizes: “Global commerce moves faster than ever, yet FX volatility continues to create barriers for businesses operating across borders.”

Meet the Founder: Dor Golan is a Financial Powerhouse with Global Experience

A Grain Above

We've been waiting for a company like this to exist for a long time. Mark experienced the headache caused by globalization and currency fragmentation while he was a finance leader himself at Stripe. He saw the operational overhead and cost inefficiencies firsthand, and remembers brainstorming ways to not only decrease the pain, but also turn these market dynamics into a business opportunity.

Separately, Ron heard about Dor, Michal, Nir and Aharon from multiple investors, founders, and angels in Tel Aviv — most notably from his friends and former colleagues at Aleph, who led Grain's seed round.

Minutes into our first meeting, it became clear that this was *the* founding team to build a game-changing business in this category.

Through his time as a hedge fund manager and multi-time founder, Grain’s CEO Dor has the unique combination of deep FX/cross-border domain-expertise and the ability to build a business from the ground-up. A rare skillset for fintech and AI founders.

Michal, Grain’s COO, is the super connector, financial institution veteran and operational killer. As the former COO of Barclays Israel, her ability to “get sh*t done” is unparalleled.

Aharon, Grain’s Chief Business Officer, is the “finance nerd” of the group, having co-founded a liquidity provider with Dor before joining forces on Grain. As the former Deutsche Bank and Barclays MD covering FX (where he met Michal), Aharon is the horsepower behind the FX hedging infrastructure.

Nir brings the “Silicon Valley” startup experience to the group. As CPO, Nir leverages his experience as the mobile fintech product leader for Mint at Intuit and VP/Head of Product at Melio, Bluevine and Rewire.

Building in a highly complex, relationship oriented industry at the forefront of AI takes a unique founding team with a combination of deep domain expertise, hustle, clout within the financial institution ecosystem, and Silicon Valley DNA. With Dor, Michal, Nir and Aharon at the helm, this team has it all.

Converting FX Problems to Cross-Border Payment Solutions

Grain is an FX/cross-border infrastructure product built by industry veterans and technology pioneers to solve three basic problems:

1. Currency exposure: When a company accepts payment or needs to pay out vendors in multiple currencies, they end up exposed to foreign exchange risk. What happens if they accept a payment in Thai Bahts (or USD, Euro, etc), need to pay a supplier 30 days later in Indonesian Rupiah, and, in between, the exchange rates between the two currencies dramatically shift? This is a common occurrence that Grain protects companies against. By using financial instruments, such as options and future contracts, as well as capabilities to net out transactions internally, Grain enables companies to lock in exchange rates for extended periods of time. This action protects them against volatility, enabling more predictability in running their businesses and increasing their margin structure. By providing relevant quotes at high volume and via API, Grain dramatically reduces workflow burdens for their customers and allows for hedging far smaller transactions than incumbent competitors.

2. Dynamic pricing: Grain goes one step further than just hedging the currencies — the Grain platform plugs into a customer's payments infrastructure, uses their customer behavior data to offer dynamic pricing and leverages AI to predict specific user behavior to tailor the best solution on a per transaction basis to maximize revenue uplift. For example, Grain can use historical cancellation rates as an input to assess the probability of a currency transaction and adjust pricing accordingly. This can lead to lower prices which, especially in an industry where pricing is as commoditized as travel, which can meaningfully impact sales and revenue.

3. Operational overhead removal: When you talk to finance teams at travel companies, PSPs or e-commerce marketplaces, managing FX exposure is a pain. Teams often either are unsophisticated in their FX (i.e. just markup their prices by a fixed percentage, knowingly leaving money on the table), or need to handle a complicated infrastructure of holding multiple currencies, running analyses / trades, working with different bank partners, etc. Grain abstracts this complexity and handles it; instantly removing large points of friction for finance teams.

According to Dor, “Grain’s founding team set out to shift the paradigm by turning FX from a challenge into a competitive advantage. Our platform enables CFOs to eliminate currency exposure with precision while simultaneously driving revenue growth for their companies.”

Network FX: From Tel Aviv to the World

In less than a year since launch of its product, Grain currently processes over $1 billion in annual transactions and is expanding into industries including travel, payments, merchant acquisition and AP/AR software. The company has quickly become the trusted FX infrastructure provider for cross-border platforms. They are rapidly becoming a talent vortex within the Israeli tech ecosystem with key hires coming from places like Wix, Melio and Barclays.

We couldn’t be more excited about what’s next in the years to come. If Stripe is an index on the shift of offline to online commerce and RevenueCat is a representative index on the explosion of digital consumer applications across web and mobile, Grain will grow into the index on the increasing frequency, volume and complexity of cross-border commerce. Grain will become the de-facto FX super suit for its customers.

As the aggregate volume of retail cross-border payments continues its dramatic growth, there will be very few businesses that won't need help managing their FX exposure. Grain will quickly become the obvious (and only) solution.

Today, we’re excited to announce Grain’s BCV-led $33 million Series A alongside our great friends at Aleph, Vesey and Hanaco. We believe wholeheartedly in the founders and we are excited to support Grain on a global mission to simplify and de-risk cross-border commerce.

(Team photo credit: photographer Roei Shor)