Tria Raises $12M to Build Self-Custodial Neobank for Humans and AI

Tria is addressing what founders Parth Bhalla and Vijit Katta identify as the biggest challenge in cryptocurrency adoption: practical usability. While traditional neobanks like Revolut and Monzo have simplified fiat finance by masking legacy complexity and now manage over $4 trillion in global transactions, Web3 takes this evolution further by removing intermediaries entirely. However, 98% of users remain stuck in legacy user experiences, unable to navigate the complexities of gas fees, bridges, and seed phrases that characterize current crypto ecosystems.

The $12 million funding round represents a significant vote of confidence from the crypto establishment, with participation from P2 Ventures, Aptos, Tria’s own community, and executives from Polygon, Ethereum Foundation, Wintermute, Sentient, 0G, Concrete, Eigen, and others. Polychain and Polygon served as pre-seed advisors, while the team includes alumni from Binance, Polygon, OpenSea, Nethermind, and Intel, with additional backing from prominent UAE Royal Family and government officials.

Tria’s core innovation lies in its proprietary BestPath AVS technology, a decentralized settlements marketplace where solvers, routers, and relayers compete to route transactions instantly across chains. This system enables users to spend, trade, and earn from a single self-custodial balance without ever thinking about gas, bridges, or seed phrases. From grabbing coffee in Tokyo to swapping tokens across chains, Tria enables instant, seamless, and fee-free transactions through Visa cards that function in over 150 countries and support more than 1,000 tokens.

The BestPath engine already routes payments and trades for over 250,000 users and is used by 70+ protocols and AI ecosystems including Polygon, Arbitrum, Sentient, and Injective. Trades are routed through Tria’s BestPath engine for optimized execution, while idle assets automatically earn yield that repays card balances, creating a self-sustaining financial ecosystem. This infrastructure represents the programmable payments layer that underpins Tria’s consumer-facing neobank interface.

Tria’s vision extends beyond human users to embrace the emerging reality of autonomous financial agents. With projections indicating that over 25% of global digital payments—approximately $25-30 trillion annually—will be executed by AI agents by 2030, Tria positions itself as the missing infrastructure piece for this new financial paradigm. The platform serves as both the consumer neobank interface and the programmable payments infrastructure underneath, enabling anyone or any agent to transact natively on-chain.

This strategic positioning aligns with broader market trends where stablecoins, real-world assets (RWAs), and autonomous agents are rewriting the financial stack. With on-chain volume projected to hit $100 trillion by 2030, Tria aims to capture the growing demand for financial services that combine Web3’s decentralization with traditional finance’s usability. The company’s commitment to building with the community, not just for it, is further demonstrated by plans for a public allocation round that would give users ownership stakes in the neobank they use.