Raycash opens private beta for confidential payments on Ethereum

Raycash opened a private beta on Ethereum mainnet with 80,000 people on its waitlist as of November 2, 2026. The stablecoin payments startup was spun out of confidentiality protocol Zama, and a statement shared exclusively with The Block identifies it as the first retail payment product built on the Zama Protocol.

Users deposit dollars into confidential token formats such as cUSDC, then hold the balance, send peer-to-peer transfers or earn yield. Raycash keeps transaction amounts encrypted onchain, so the public ledger records activity without displaying the dollar values moved.

How does Raycash hide payment amounts?

Raycash uses Fully Homomorphic Encryption, or FHE, to compute over encrypted data without decrypting it first. Under the product's design, that lets the network process a payment without exposing the value transferred.

The app remains self-custodial: users control their funds instead of giving Raycash custody. It issues no new token. Sender and recipient addresses remain traceable onchain, so Raycash conceals amounts rather than the wallet addresses themselves.

Compared with a conventional token transfer, the result is a narrower disclosure model. The chain retains both wallet addresses while withholding the payment amount, placing Raycash between full transparency and full anonymity. That structure gives Zama a retail setting for testing demand beyond protocol-level milestones.

What milestones preceded the beta?

Zama's protocol went live on December 30, 2025. The launch included the first confidential stablecoin transfer using cUSDT, a confidential version of Tether's dollar token. That transfer preceded Raycash's move from an infrastructure protocol to a consumer-facing payments application.

Zama introduced a metric called Total Value Shielded, or TVS, in January 2026. TVS tracks value held inside the encrypted system. Zama rolled out the metric after shielding more than $121 million during its token auction; the $121 million figure is historical and does not represent disclosed Raycash deposits.

By June 2026, Zama had expanded into confidential stablecoin yield vaults, built with lending protocol Morpho and risk curator Steakhouse. The arrangement placed Zama's confidentiality stack alongside established DeFi participants and extended the protocol from transfers into yield-bearing products. Raycash now offers users the ability to park a balance and earn yield.

What does the private beta test?

The 80,000-person waitlist measures prospective interest, not funded adoption. The cleaner signal will be how many waitlisted users deposit assets and continue using the application. Raycash's broader test is whether the retail product converts Zama's protocol capabilities into recurring, funded activity.

FHE has historically required substantial computing resources, making speed the practical constraint for a consumer payments application. The beta must show that encrypted settlement can run fast enough for routine transfers. It must also show that users value confidential amounts enough to deposit funds despite visible wallet addresses.

The design offers a limited form of privacy: transactions remain attributable to sender and recipient addresses, but the public chain does not disclose the amount. With no adoption or performance results disclosed, the beta leaves both questions open.

The private beta's next market-structure test is whether Raycash can turn waitlist interest into funded, repeat usage while keeping FHE payments fast enough for retail transfers and preserving its visible-address, hidden-amount design.