Challenge

In 2021, Manuel Godoy and Bernardo Garcia, MBA candidates at the Wharton School, wanted to help Latino immigrants in the US send money home faster and more cheaply and conveniently. As immigrants themselves, they knew the shortcomings of traditional remittance services: providers charged exorbitant fees (up to 13%), took days to process transfers, and required inconvenient in-person cash transactions. At best, the process was impersonal and inefficient; at worst, it was exploitative.

Godoy and Garcia founded Félix with an ambitious goal: to make sending money cross-border to friends and family more affordable and as easy and personal as sending a message. They enabled real-time money transfers at lower costs with stablecoins, bypassing the multiple currency conversions and intermediary fees built into traditional remittance rails. To make the process user-friendly, they created an AI-powered chatbot that integrated seamlessly with WhatsApp, allowing users to send money as part of their everyday conversations with family and friends.

By 2025, Félix had experienced rapid growth. However, this success brought new challenges. The company needed to enhance its payments infrastructure to support various US payment methods while efficiently remitting funds to different countries and currencies. Compliance with money transmitter regulations required a complex multiparty setup, adding layers of complexity to their operations. And in the competitive remittance market, maintaining high payment-authorization rates was paramount for user satisfaction and retention.

Finally, as it expanded, Félix needed a solution that could scale with its AI-driven platform, processing increasing transaction volumes without compromising the speed and efficiency that stablecoins provided.

Solution

To address these challenges, Félix turned to Stripe in early 2025, based on its strong reputation in the industry and broad product lineup. “We wanted to find a partner that would support and scale our current payment infrastructure, making it more robust and reliable,” said Lohe Mindiola Diaz, senior product manager at Félix. “Stripe is a very well-known company, and they provide a full ecosystem of payment solutions, not just processing.”

Félix integrated Stripe Payments to power the funding mechanism behind its AI-driven WhatsApp chatbot. Instead of going to a store with cash, users simply tell Félix’s chatbot how much money they want to send and to whom. With that information, Félix automatically sends the user to a payment page, and Stripe processes their card payment.

This seamless integration into WhatsApp allows users to initiate money transfers as part of their regular conversations, making the remittance process feel like a natural extension of their everyday WhatsApp interactions. “It’s like you’re talking to your friend on WhatsApp,” said Hugo Rodriguez, associate director of fintech and payments at Félix.

As Félix grows, Stripe makes it easy to expand to new regions and respond to user demand for new payment methods. Currently, Félix plans to add ACH, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

To simplify the complexity of managing its multiparty setup, Félix adopted Stripe Connect, a solution for orchestrating money movement across multiple parties, to route payments to the correct accounts.

For currency conversion and liquidity management, Félix also uses Bridge, a Stripe company, to offer stablecoins in its transactions. Bridge’s infrastructure ensures USDC and USD liquidity to process transactions. This approach helps Félix minimize transaction costs while still achieving high transaction speeds across borders.

To drive user retention through improved authorization rates, Félix uses Stripe’s network tokens, replacing sensitive account information with secure tokens. This feature, combined with Stripe’s robust payment processing, helps Félix maintain high authorization rates—important for user satisfaction and trust.

Results

Félix achieves 30% month-over-month growth in payment volume with Stripe

Félix’s easy-to-use, low-cost remittance solution has quickly become popular with Latino immigrants in the US, and adding Stripe functionality has accelerated the company’s growth. Since launching with Stripe in April 2025, Félix has achieved 30% month-over-month growth in payment volume.

Stripe helps Félix reach a ~90% payment authorization rate

Stripe’s authorization features helped Félix achieve a ~90% payment authorization rate, which is extremely high for the remittance industry. The company plans to adopt Stripe Radar for Fraud Teams, an AI-powered solution that uses data from millions of companies to identify likely fraudulent transactions and allows for bespoke fraud rules, which it expects to improve authorization rates even further. Radar for Fraud Teams will also combat schemes such as stolen cards and friendly fraud, which are common in the remittance industry.

Scalable infrastructure supports projected $3 billion in payment volume

Félix expects to hit $3 billion in total payment volume. As usage increases, Stripe is helping the team consistently provide a high-quality user experience by maintaining transaction speed and avoiding downtime. For example, the company’s largest volume day is Mother’s Day, which Claudia Garavini, vice president of business development at Félix, described as “the Super Bowl of remittances. This is a true testament to the importance of family to Latinos and their love for their mothers.” Stripe’s 99.999% uptime helps Félix keep up during busy periods.

Going forward, Stripe will help Félix quickly roll out features that appeal to its customer base. For example, the team is testing a subscription model where users can pay a monthly fee in exchange for certain benefits, such as a lower FX rate or transaction fee. “You just send the user a link, and they create their subscription and have money billed every month without us doing anything else,” said Mindiola Diaz.

Stripe and Bridge position Félix to achieve its mission

Félix plans to continue using stablecoins to keep costs low, transaction speed high, and access wide—enabling it to reach even the most hard-to-reach markets. The company is opening new corridors, such as Nicaragua, Peru, and Ecuador, using stablecoins to avoid high FX costs and enable faster settlement.