“Throughout Thursday and Friday, we initiated a lot of payments out of SVB,” Trace co-founder Bernardo Brites said. “We were in desperate mode, trying to help as many companies as we could.”
Trace itself is a nascent, seed-stage startup but has added an estimated $1.5 billion in new customer accounts to their waitlist in recent days, according to Brites. Founded in 2021 as a cross-border payments provider, Trace closed a $4.3 million seed round in February 2022 that was led by New York-based HOF Capital.
Last week, seizing on the exodus of SVB depositors, Trace launched a competitor checking account, and many founders have jumped at the opportunity. Startups including Rocket.chat, Mercado Bitcoin and Rentbrella have all signed up for the new banking service, TechCrunch reported.
The scramble for alternatives speaks to the chaos that SVB’s collapse has left…