Farooq Malik is the co-founder and CEO of Rain, a financial technology company that provides a corporate credit and expense management platform built on stablecoin infrastructure. His career includes product leadership roles at financial technology and cryptocurrency companies such as Blockchain.com and Merrill Lynch, as well as software engineering at Salesforce. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

Malik attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). During his time at the university, he met his future co-founder, Charles Naut. ^{[2] [3]}

Career

After graduating from Berkeley, Malik began his career as a Software Engineer at Salesforce, where he worked on the core platform engineering team. He then transitioned into product management roles within the financial industry, first as a Product Manager in the institutional trading division at Merrill Lynch, where he focused on global markets trading platforms, which served as a basis for working with digital assets. ^[2]​

Malik later joined Blockchain.com as Head of Product, where he led strategy for the company's retail wallet and exchange products. His experience at Blockchain.com provided him with direct insight into the operational challenges faced by crypto-native organizations and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). He observed that these entities, despite holding significant treasuries in on-chain assets, were often unable to secure traditional financial services like corporate credit cards, as banks frequently classified them as "pre-revenue." This experience directly inspired him to co-found Rain to address these financial infrastructure gaps. ^[2]​

Rain

Malik co-founded Rain in May 2022 with Charles Naut, who serves as the company's CTO. Rain is a financial infrastructure company that provides a corporate card and expense management platform designed for businesses, DAOs, and other organizations that operate with digital assets. The company's mission is to build the "financial plumbing" that bridges the gap between on-chain treasuries and the traditional, off-chain economy, allowing businesses to spend their stablecoin holdings on real-world operational expenses. ^{[3] [2]}​

History and Founding

The idea for Rain originated from a side project Malik and Naut started called SignandWire.com, a tool designed to streamline fundraising by embedding payment functionality into e-signature flows. While developing this tool, they experienced firsthand the delays and inefficiencies of traditional payment rails like ACH and wire transfers. A pivotal moment occurred when a user requested the ability to fund an investment with the stablecoin USDC. After implementing this feature, they consistently received feedback from web3 founders about the difficulty of paying for basic business expenses—such as software subscriptions, travel, and hardware—using their crypto treasuries. ^{[3] [4]}​

Malik and Naut realized the web3 industry was relying on inefficient "informal off-ramps and reimbursements" to function. Their conviction in the superiority of stablecoin payment rails was solidified on Christmas Eve 2021 when investor Balaji Srinivasan used their platform to invest in their project via USDC. The funds were received and available almost instantly, demonstrating the power of a 24/7, near-instant settlement layer compared to the traditional banking system, which was closed for the holiday. This experience led them to pivot fully and establish Rain to solve this "last-mile" problem for the digital asset economy. ^{[3] [4]}​

Technology and Product

Rain's core product is a corporate credit card and expense management platform that allows companies to spend against the value of their on-chain stablecoin holdings without needing to first sell the assets and off-ramp them to a fiat bank account. This provides liquidity while helping companies avoid potential taxable events and banking frictions. ^{[5] [2]}​

The platform operates on a non-custodial or self-custodial model. When a customer onboards, Rain deploys a unique smart contract and transfers ownership to the customer. The customer then deposits stablecoins, such as USDC, into this contract, retaining ownership and control over their assets. Rain's underwriting system monitors the collateral held in the smart contract in real-time and issues a corporate credit card with a corresponding credit limit. When the card is used for a purchase, Rain facilitates the fiat transaction with the merchant and reconciles it against the customer's stablecoin collateral. At the end of a billing cycle, the customer can pay their statement balance using various methods, including by authorizing a debit from the stablecoins held in their smart contract wallet. ^{[4] [2]}​

Funding

​Rain has raised over $338 million in funding across multiple rounds from venture capital firms. ^[2]​

• Pre-Seed Round: In May 2022, the company raised $3 million.
• Seed Round: Rain raised a $6 million seed round in November 2023, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from firms including Coinbase Ventures and Uniswap Labs Ventures.
• Series A: The company announced a $27 million Series A round on March 24, 2025, led by Norwest Venture Partners. Other investors in the round included Lightspeed, Galaxy Ventures, and The General Partnership.
• Series B: In January 2026, Rain closed a 1.95 billion.

The funding has been used to scale the company's team and infrastructure to meet demand from its target market of DAOs, crypto-native companies, and other global businesses with on-chain treasuries. ^{[2] [3]}​

Partnerships and Integration

Under Malik's leadership, Rain has formed several key partnerships to build out its infrastructure and expand its product offerings.

• Paymentology: Rain partnered with Paymentology, a global card issuer-processor, to power the issuance of its physical and virtual corporate cards. This collaboration provides the infrastructure needed to authorize transactions against stablecoin collateral in real-time and enables Rain to offer its products to a global customer base. ^{[6] [7]}
• Toku: In 2025, Rain announced a partnership with Toku, a global payroll and tax compliance platform. The integration allows companies to manage and execute compliant global payroll using stablecoins from their Rain treasury accounts. Employees and contractors can receive payments in stablecoins and then use the Rain card to access and spend their funds. ^[8]
• Visa: Rain became a Visa Principal Member, a status that allows the company to issue cards directly on the Visa network and manage its own card programs. This partnership is a core component of Rain's strategy to build a global system independent of traditional banking partners that may be hesitant to engage with the digital asset industry. ^{[7] [9]}

Philosophy and Vision

Malik views Rain as an essential infrastructure provider for a new financial system built on digital money. He frequently uses an analogy to explain the company's role: early mobile phones would not have gained widespread adoption if they could only call other mobile phones; their ability to connect to traditional landlines was the "killer unlock." Similarly, Malik believes that for digital money like stablecoins to become useful for everyday commerce, it must be able to seamlessly interact with the existing "present money" world of fiat currencies and legacy payment rails. ^[4]​

He has stated that Rain's core mission is to solve the structural limitations of the fiat-based settlement stack by creating a global, programmatic credit system built on the blockchain. By allowing anyone with digital assets to borrow against them, Rain aims to decouple creditworthiness from an individual's geographic location or traditional credit history. ^[5]​

Quotes

• On the founding insight for Rain: "In the early days of Rain, and I would talk to our early customers and realize that for them stablecoins were intellectually the same as money and they expected them to behave like money and spend like money." ^[10]
• On the problem Rain solves: "Constant questions like 'How can we pay for GitHub with crypto?' and 'Do you have any ideas on the best way to pay for laptops?' We noticed this was a repetitive theme and realized that this whole space was relying on informal off-ramps and reimbursements to support a multi-billion dollar industry at the forefront of emerging technology." ^[3]
• On the company's vision for a new credit system: "We’re building a new system for credit. One that is global and programmatic. A system that doesn’t require trusting a bank, or a specific country’s financial system. Instead, you just have to trust the code." ^[9]
• On the broader mission: "We're making the bet that digital money is going to require the rebuilding of a brand new infrastructure that doesn't yet exist... Our thesis is really around ‘how do we build all the tooling and all the infrastructure... to let anybody build those use cases?’" ^[4]

Angel Investing

Malik is also an angel investor in several technology startups. His investments include Cape and Layer3. ^[6] He is also known to have invested in Toku, which later became a strategic partner for Rain. ^[7]​

Interviews

Stablecoin-Based Payment Infrastructure #01

In an interview published on the YouTube channel Leaders In Payments Podcast on January 29, 2026, Farooq Malik, CEO and co-founder of Rain, described his view on the use of stablecoin technology within payment infrastructure and card issuing.

According to Malik, Rain was established to address limitations in existing fintech backend systems by integrating card network operations with blockchain-based settlement mechanisms. He stated that the company’s status as a principal member of Visa allows it to sponsor card programs directly and conduct settlement activities without reliance on bank sponsorship arrangements. He explained that this structure permits transaction settlement outside standard banking hours and alters how liquidity is managed in card payment flows.

Malik characterized stablecoins as a technical extension of current fintech systems rather than an alternative financial framework. He explained that stablecoin-based settlement changes the timing and data handling of transactions while remaining interoperable with established payment rails. From his perspective, this approach affects reconciliation processes, settlement cycles, and capital allocation within payment programs.

He also stated that Rain’s infrastructure is designed to consolidate regulatory and operational requirements across multiple jurisdictions into a single technical interface. According to Malik, this model enables financial technology firms to operate card programs across different regions without establishing separate local banking relationships in each market.

During the interview, Malik discussed potential developments in financial infrastructure, indicating that stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits, and central bank digital currencies may operate in parallel within shared payment systems. He suggested that such arrangements could influence how payment settlement, liquidity management, and cross-border transactions are structured in the future. ^[11]

Tokenized Money and Payments Infrastructure #02

In an interview published on January 29, 2026, on the Leaders In Payments Podcast, Farooq Malik, co-founder and CEO of Rain, discussed his views on the application of stablecoins and tokenized dollars within contemporary payment infrastructure. In conversation with host Greg Myers, Malik described how tokenized forms of money are being incorporated into payment use cases such as card issuance, cross-border transfers, and embedded financial services.

According to Malik, Rain provides a payments infrastructure that integrates both traditional financial rails and blockchain-based settlement. The company supports pay-ins and payouts through mechanisms including ACH transfers, wire payments, and Visa card networks, alongside the use of multiple stablecoins across 11 blockchain networks. Malik explained that Rain’s internal account and ledger architecture is designed to abstract blockchain-specific operations, allowing tokenized balances to be managed in a manner comparable to conventional financial accounts.

Malik referenced a credit card use case structured around margin-backed accounts, in which individual card transactions initiate receivable financing settled in stablecoin. He stated that this arrangement reduces the amount of working capital required to operate such card programs, estimating a reduction of approximately 80 percent. The model was presented as an example of how tokenized settlement can be applied to existing payment products without altering the end-user interaction.

The interview also addressed Rain’s approach to enabling financial products across multiple jurisdictions. Malik described how a single application programming interface can be used to issue payment and account products that comply with regulatory requirements in different markets. This structure, according to him, allows platforms to distribute payments to creators, freelancers, and merchants in US dollar-denominated digital accounts without maintaining separate banking integrations in each country.

Malik attributed recent increases in transaction volumes to greater regulatory clarity surrounding stablecoins and tokenized assets. He indicated that clearer regulatory frameworks have coincided with increased institutional participation in this segment of the payments industry. In contrasting infrastructure models, Malik outlined differences between vertically integrated providers and arrangements that rely on multiple intermediaries, noting that Rain operates as a principal Visa member and maintains control over its core payments stack.

In addition to stablecoins, Malik discussed broader developments affecting financial services, including open banking initiatives, globally distributed consumer applications, and changes in work patterns that involve cross-border mobility. He characterized these trends as contributing factors to demand for payment systems that are not tied to specific national banking structures. Malik also reflected on timing and market readiness, describing tokenized money as part of a longer sequence of monetary developments that includes the transition from physical cash to electronic payment systems. ^[12]