At 25, the founder chases a financial dream—how to raise $180 million to build “a stablecoin settlement bank” Augustus

Written by: insights4vc

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Recently, the European payments company Augustus completed a $180 million funding round, with a post-investment valuation of $1 billion, and received conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national bank charter. How did this European payments startup rise so quickly—from a traditional open banking API to a wholesale bank covering tokenized deposits and digital asset wallets? insights4vc analyzes it from the founder’s background, the logic behind its shift, and its business architecture. The details are as follows.

Augustus was originally called Ivy, a merchant checkout product built on open banking. Over time, integrations with Mollie, Kraken, and Circle pushed it into larger-scale institutional flows, the stablecoin space, and U.S. dollar infrastructure. In July 2025, the company’s leadership decided to apply for a U.S. national bank charter.

The logic is straightforward: under an API architecture, a bank can hold customer accounts, control its own ledger, connect to payment systems, and reduce reliance on sponsor banks. It can also serve international fintech companies and digital asset firms that often struggle to obtain reliable U.S. dollar banking services.

The challenge lies in execution. Augustus plans to offer deposit-taking, lending, correspondent banking, treasury management services, tokenized deposits, digital asset infrastructure, and BIN sponsorship services, but it still needs to build many of the systems that support these offerings. The company has not yet proven that its proprietary platform, Marble, can reduce operating costs, nor has it proven that its payment volume can translate into durable bank revenue. In addition, its public stance on whether it will issue stablecoins has also changed.

For now, it is most accurate to view Augustus as a European payments company attempting to become a “wholesale bank in the stablecoin era.” It may eventually build a unique settlement platform, but it has not done so yet.

Ferdinand Dabitz

The 25-year-old founder behind the bank

Ferdinand Dabitz grew up and was educated in Berlin. In his early life, the most clearly identifiable details that can be independently verified have little to do with banks or technology—they are instead related to Latin.

In May 2019, Dabitz and Peter Mosebjane Lieck represented Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in an international Latin competition held in Italy—Aperino Sissero? According to records published by the school and the competition, after an exam lasting as long as five hours, Dabitz placed fourth among about 200 participating students. Lieck also took part in the same event. Relevant records confirm that the two were already classmates before 2019, but they do not specify exactly when they first met.

Augustus’s recruiting materials show that Dabitz later studied law at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), and worked on or conducted research at the German Bundestag, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, and McKinsey. This article could not independently verify the specific dates, the nature of his work, or whether he passed the German national examinations. Therefore, whether he was a law-school dropout or a qualified German lawyer, there is no evidence to support it.

Even so, his legal background still helps explain how he pitches the company. Dabitz tends to use institutional language rather than software functionality—focusing more on regulation, the monetary system, and the boundaries between private enterprises and the state. Former regulators recruited by Augustus say he views regulation as part of product design, rather than an issue that needs to be dealt with after the fact.

Greg Quarles, the prospective bank CEO, told Dallas Innovates that advisers had warned the founders that applying for a bank charter requires an experienced banker. Augustus subsequently hired him through executive headhunting.

This personnel appointment also reveals a core weakness in Dabitz’s résumé: he has no publicly known experience managing deposits, liquidity, credit risk, or a regulated balance sheet during periods of market pressure. Augustus is trying to make up for this by separating the group’s strategic leadership from the operational work required to build a bank, and by recruiting executives with direct regulatory and banking experience.

The name Augustus reflects Dabitz’s interest in classical history. He connects the company’s name to the consolidation of control over money by this Roman emperor, and to how Augustus rose from a devalued heir to become a political ruler. For a company shifting from payment-routing business to monetary infrastructure, such branding is understandable. However, understanding the company’s business should not reference classical history, and there is no documentation supporting the claim that Augustus invented modern money.

In 2025, Dabitz was selected for the Thiel Scholarship, adding another layer to the founders’ narrative. At that time, Ivy had already completed seed and Series A funding. The Thiel Foundation described the company as a “world trade bank,” which is one of the earliest public signs that management’s ambitions had far exceeded the merchant checkout space.

Within two years, awardees could receive a $200k grant, and applicants must be no older than 22 at the time of application. The foundation has never explained why it chose the founder of a company that was already well-funded, and there is no public evidence that the scholarship shaped Augustus’s bank-charter strategy.

Even so, its network may still have played a role. Valar Ventures, co-founded with Peter Thiel, led Ivy’s Series A round, and the scholarship placed Dabitz within a circle of founders and investors who are willing to back unconventional projects at the edge of technology and regulation. That may help with fundraising, hiring, and resource matching; however, it cannot explain customer demand, operating performance, or the company’s standing in the eyes of regulators.

How the founding team was assembled

Augustus is typically viewed as Dabitz’s company, but its initial product was built by a broader team of co-founders.

According to the company’s official résumé, Peter Lieck—who studied at the same school as Dabitz—later pursued business administration and economics at Zeppelin University. He initially handled revenue and business development and is now known as the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) or Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). His work focus appears to remain on partnerships, distribution, and institutional relationships.

Another Zeppelin University graduate, Joshua Becker, originally served as Chief Product Officer, then moved to Chief Operating Officer. Simon Wimmer studied information systems at the Technical University of Munich and has long served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer. Among the four founders, he is the one most closely tied to engineering R&D and the development of the Augustus bank platform.

There is little public information on how this team came together. Existing records do not show when Becker or Wimmer first met Dabitz, whether the founding team had tried other products previously, or how initial equity and decision-making power were allocated. German corporate registration documents show that all four were appointed to the predecessor company in January 2022, which provides the clearest documentary starting point for this team.

Their backgrounds make sense for a merchant payments startup: the four split responsibilities across sales, product, operations, and engineering. What they lack is experience building and operating a chartered U.S. bank. Augustus’s subsequent hiring decisions reflect this gap.

Recruiting Greg Quarles was especially critical. If an application for a national bank charter were led entirely by founders in their twenties, it would inevitably raise questions about corporate governance, credibility, and execution. Quarles brought experience from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), prior banking leadership experience, and a deep understanding of what regulators expect from new institutions. His addition provided the prospective bank with an operational weight that the founding team could not deliver on its own.

The more difficult question is how power would work in practice. Dabitz remains the group CEO, chief strategist, and the company’s public face at Augustus. Quarles is the prospective bank president, responsible for preparing the institution’s pre-opening review. Only if the bank’s management, board, and risk control functions operate independently from the parent company—and have the courage to challenge Dabitz when necessary—can this structure meet regulators’ requirements.

These tests would very likely revolve around customer risk, liquidity, growth targets, and the timing of new product launches. In a regulated bank, compliance, risk, and finance executives cannot merely advise management; they must have the authority, resources, and reporting channels needed to delay or terminate relevant activities.

Ivy’s initial attempt to bypass card-network rails

Ivy’s initial product was easier to understand than what it is now. At checkout, consumers chose “bank payment,” authenticated through a bank, and authorized funds to be transferred directly from their account. Ivy provided the merchant-facing API, network connectivity, and payment logic.

Unlike card transactions, a direct account-to-account (A2A) transfer does not require the card issuer, card network, and acquirer to approve and settle the payment. This can lower card fees and chargeback risk, but it sacrifices some consumer features that people value, such as credit limits, familiar dispute-resolution processes, and globally accepted payment credentials.

Ivy added smart routing, transaction risk controls, instant settlement, and payment-link capabilities. “Routing” refers to choosing the connection method or payment route most likely to complete a bank payment in a given market; “payment links” allow merchants to initiate the same payment flow outside the traditional checkout process.

The company’s strategy of viewing Visa and Mastercard as its primary competitors is commercially shrewd, but its assessment of the competitive landscape is not comprehensive enough. Card networks dominate merchants’ transaction volume and economic returns, so replacing card payments does imply significant business upside. However, in day-to-day transactions, Ivy faces competition from open-banking providers such as TrueLayer, Trustly, Volt, and Tink, as well as local payment methods and payment service providers (PSPs) that can integrate multiple providers.

In July 2023, Ivy claimed that its API could reach about 5,000 banks, 50 markets, and 500 million accounts. These figures were cited multiple times in TechCrunch coverage of its seed and Series A rounds, but they were not independently audited. Ivy did not publish an integration list distinguishing directly connected banks, aggregator-connected access, partner coverage, or theoretically accessible integrations.

According to Series A reporting, merchants pay tiered fees based on transaction volume. Ivy has never publicly disclosed specific fee rates or profit margins. Mactrade, a German consumer electronics marketplace, is one of the few early customers that was publicly nominated.

This model faces several common limitations: open banking standards vary across countries; bank APIs vary in reliability and identity-authentication design; cross-border payment interoperability still lags behind domestic payments; what merchants care about is conversion rate, not the theoretical number of accessible accounts; and consumers often default to using cards or e-wallets. As a service provider, Ivy sits above the banks but cannot fully control those banks’ uptime, data, or payment-connection permissions.

These shortcomings do not make the product useless; they mainly limit product differentiation. A merchant payment API does not need to own the bank accounts, ledgers, or settlement layer that ultimately determine the end-user experience in order to achieve broad coverage.

Why it shifted upstream

Existing evidence supports the fact that Augustus shifted upstream, but it does not support the claim that the shift was inevitable.

As late as January 2025, when Ivy was interviewed by The Paypers, it still publicly positioned itself as an instant bank payments network and a replacement for card networks. Likewise, in March 2025, the integration with Mollie was also promoted as a merchant-focused “bank payments” service.

The change in direction came from changes in its customer base. Kraken needed banking funding connectivity, euro settlement, and account infrastructure tied to crypto—not just a better retail checkout experience. Circle brought opportunities for stablecoin exchange and settlement. In May 2025, the Thiel Foundation referred to Ivy as a “world trade bank,” indicating that management was reshaping the company’s positioning even before publicly rebranding.

According to Quarles and Dabitz, customers wanted direct access to the U.S. payment system and more reliable U.S. dollar infrastructure. In a closed-door executive meeting in July 2025, leadership decided to apply for a national bank charter. The company began preliminary discussions with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in October, and formally submitted the application on December 18.

This was both an evolution and a transformation. The common thread is transferring funds between accounts through software. But nearly everything about that capability changed:

A bank under the API architecture allows Augustus to hold customer balances, manage ledgers, control payment priority, and retain more economic upside. It can also reduce reliance on sponsor banks, since sponsor banks may exit partnerships with crypto or international fintech firms at any time.

The tradeoff is that Augustus now must integrate multiple lines of business: payment software, deposit-taking, correspondent banking, credit, treasury management, financial crime compliance, and digital asset infrastructure. Each line has different failure modes. This charter is not merely a way to swap the same product for a stronger license.

The original merchant API did not disappear. Augustus’s official documentation still keeps both the older 2023 API for open-banking payments and the 2026 new bank API. This makes it a preserved product, but the company’s sales messaging and capital allocation sheet indicate it is no longer a strategic core.

The services currently provided in practice

The clearest operating entity for Augustus today is Ivy Pay Oy, a payments institution in Finland. The company’s articles list this entity as the European service provider, and the cross-border services license registry of the Bank of Lithuania shows that the entity has permission across the entire European Economic Area (EEA) to provide services such as payment accounts, fund transfers, payment initiation, and account information. Previously, this entity was called H3llo Pay Oy.

Payments institutions can operate payment accounts, execute transfers, and hold customer funds in custody, but this does not equal a federally insured deposit-taking bank. Customer funds usually must be protected through segregation and cannot be used to make loans like ordinary bank deposits.

Augustus says the entity provides euro clearing services and processes hundreds of billions in funds annually. However, the term “clearing” must be approached carefully. Public records confirm that it offers euro payment and settlement services with access to SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area), but they do not prove that Ivy Pay Oy is a bank, a direct settlement participant in the Eurosystem, or a central clearing institution. The company may only exercise “clearing” duties in a commercial sense—meaning it receives, routes, reconciles, and settles payments through its regulated entity and partner banks.

Current documentation reveals more details: it retains Ivy’s open-banking API while introducing an entirely new bank API set covering operational accounts, FBO accounts (accounts held on behalf of others), named virtual accounts, and digital asset wallets. Access is limited to invited users, and sandbox testing is required before go-live, while customers must pass corporate identity verification.

Some pages describe U.S. virtual accounts supporting ACH, Fedwire, and FedNow, but label the feature as beta. One operating example includes a date in September 2026. Other documents mark various currency exchanges as “coming soon.” These pages show anticipated API design and do not mean that Augustus’s national bank is currently processing real U.S. dollar transactions.

The legal disclaimer footer shows that Ivy Pay Oy is a provider of euro and pound payment services, but it does not list any regulated U.S. bank or partner that currently provides actual U.S. dollar accounts. Augustus may offer partner-bank access in a pilot capacity, but there is no publicly disclosed information confirming its specific providers, geographic coverage, or transaction volumes.

Further reading: After the bank: Neobank and the massive migration of financial power