Sling Money opens ‘global Venmo’ to US users

Sling Money, a global peer-to-peer payments app leveraging stablecoins and Solana, has launched for users with US bank accounts, the startup announced this morning.　　The app was conceived as a global equivalent to Venmo that uses the Solana network and Paxos‘ USDP stablecoin to move money around instantly for low fees. The move comes as the crypto industry as a whole seems emboldened operating in the US following Donald Trump’s presidential election win last week.　　Sling Money was founded in 2022 by Mike Hudack, who previously was chief product officer at the UK-based neobank Monzo. I spoke with Hudack back in August, and he said he became interested in building a global Venmo with crypto rails after sending crypto from London to a friend in San Francisco while investing in a Montana-based DAO. The KYC protocol and wallet onboarding was onerous, but the payment went through almost instantly, and Hudack realized hed hit on something useful.　　Since then, Sling Money has deployed in more than 75 countries, which now includes the US. By using stablecoins in tandem with Solana, which charges a fraction of a cent in transaction fees, Sling Money is very efficient, at least if you put aside the question of