Raycash launches confidential stablecoin payments and yield on Ethereum

Nathan Brooks

Raycash launched its Ethereum mainnet private beta after more than 75,000 people joined its waitlist, according to a statement the startup shared exclusively with The Block; Zama’s confidential USDC vault had reached $40 million in total value locked within seven weeks.

Raycash, a stablecoin payments startup spun out of confidentiality protocol Zama, launched the first retail payment product built on Zama Protocol. The protocol uses Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to encrypt onchain balances and transaction values.

Raycash said the app lets users hold dollars, send peer-to-peer payments and earn yield on balances while keeping amounts confidential. The company will open access in stages during the private beta before expanding it more broadly.

“People shouldn't have to choose between the benefits of stablecoins and keeping their financial information confidential,” Raycash CEO and co-founder Valerio Leo said. “We don't ask anyone to trust a new stablecoin: we take the dollars people already use and make them private, and they can move back out whenever they want.”

Zama launched its first confidential USDC yield vault in June with Morpho and Steakhouse Financial. The vault went from zero to $40 million in total value locked within seven weeks. On Sept. 15, Zama expanded the lineup to 16 confidential vaults and launched private swaps on Ethereum.

That vault total indicates early demand for confidential yield, but it does not measure active users or transaction volume. The waitlist offers the same caution: Its signups show interest rather than adoption inside the beta. Broader access will determine whether that interest becomes recurring use.

At launch, Raycash supports USDC and plans to add more stablecoins. Its payment and funding rails include:

• Deposits by bank transfer, card or stablecoin; withdrawals to bank accounts.
• Instant sending, requests and receipts through payment links. Users can also receive dollars as stablecoins from other people.
• Background handling of Ethereum network fees, so users do not need to hold ETH in their wallets for gas.

These routes remove a familiar operational barrier for stablecoin-only users: They can fund and use the app without maintaining an ETH balance for gas. Bank transfer, card and stablecoin deposits also give the product conventional on-ramps, while bank withdrawals provide a route back to fiat.

What does this change for stablecoin users?

Raycash addresses a specific limitation of public Ethereum: Anyone can inspect a wallet address and see its associated balance and transfer amounts. Users wrap existing stablecoins 1:1 into ERC-7984 tokens, a confidential token standard built with Zama’s FHE technology. Payments still settle on Ethereum as normal onchain transfers; Zama’s technology encrypts the amounts and balances.

The wrapper does not ask users to trust a new dollar token, and users can withdraw the underlying stablecoins through permissionless unwrapping. The result is a confidential representation of stablecoins the user already holds, with an exit that does not depend on Raycash to release funds.

Raycash said the wallet is self-custodial and that the confidential tokens have no freeze or seize functions at the token layer. Users can grant view access to a specific party, such as an accountant or auditor, without making their activity public. For commercial users, that supports controlled disclosure rather than making every balance and payment public.

Idle balances can earn yield privately through Morpho directly in the app, the company said. Raycash is also developing a Raycard for private spending. Those additions extend the app beyond transfers into savings and card use. They also place Morpho inside the customer-facing yield path, while the Raycard remains in development.

Raycash has not disclosed a deadline for broader availability. The next market-structure test is whether staged beta access converts more than 75,000 waitlist signups into active use and whether the company expands beyond USDC, with no timetable supplied for either step.