Sovra, a fintech platform that gives people a dollar account they control from their phone, has raised more than $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Pharsalus Capital, with a group of regional and global angel investors joining in. The money will support the company's growth as it prepares for a public launch.
The company was founded in 2025 by Lebanese entrepreneur Ahmad Wehbi. It grew directly out of the financial crisis in Lebanon, where ordinary people watched their savings get locked inside banks and lose value almost overnight. Sovra is built to address that same set of problems across emerging markets: limited access to stable money, currency instability, and banking systems that can fail the people who rely on them.
A Dollar Account That Lives on Your Phone
Sovra puts a dollar account inside a single mobile app. From their phone, users can hold digital dollars, earn yield on their balance, send money across borders, and spend through a payment card that works globally. The card is backed by stablecoins, and transfers settle quickly at close to zero cost.
The detail that sets Sovra apart is custody. Accounts are self-custodial, which means only the user holds the keys to their own funds. There is no bank or middleman that can freeze the balance or block a withdrawal. For people who lived through deposits being trapped in a banking system, that control is the entire point.
To make this work, Sovra leans on blockchain infrastructure rather than a traditional bank ledger. Users get international dollar accounts and virtual IBANs, can save in stablecoins, and can plug into decentralized finance, known as DeFi, to put their money to work. The app is designed so that none of this requires the user to understand the plumbing underneath.
What You Can Actually Do in the App
Sovra bundles a set of features that would normally come from several separate providers. The self-custodial account is the foundation, and on top of it sit international dollar accounts and virtual IBANs that let users receive and send money the way a normal bank account would. The difference is that the balance stays under the user's own control the whole time.
From there, the money does not have to sit still. Users can hold their savings in stablecoins, which are digital tokens designed to track the value of the US dollar, and earn yield on those balances through built-in DeFi integrations. The stablecoin-backed card then closes the loop, letting users spend that same balance in the real world wherever the card is accepted.
Put together, the feature set covers the four things most people want from money: a safe place to keep it, a way to grow it, a way to move it, and a way to spend it. Sovra's bet is that bundling all of this into one app, with the user always holding the keys, is more useful than any one of these features on its own.
Built for Markets Where Banking Falls Short
Sovra is incorporated in Delaware and runs offices in Lebanon and the UAE, with operations spanning the Middle East and Europe. That structure reflects who the product is for. In many emerging markets, holding dollars is difficult, moving money internationally is slow and expensive, and inflation eats into local currency savings. Sovra's pitch is that a phone and an app can do what a bank account often cannot.
The platform sits in a category that blends several ideas at once: blockchain infrastructure, stablecoins, and self-custody finance. Instead of asking users to trust an institution with their money, it gives them the tools to hold and manage dollars themselves. The yield, the card, the transfers, and the savings features are all built around that single principle of user control.
Sovra connects into a wider ecosystem of established crypto and finance players to deliver these features. It works with Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, builds on Base, a blockchain network incubated by Coinbase, and uses Morpho, a lending protocol, to power its yield and savings tools. These partners handle the heavy infrastructure so the app can stay simple for everyday users.
The Founder and the Backers
Ahmad Wehbi works at the intersection of fintech and Web3, the term used for blockchain-based financial tools. He is a former consultant at McKinsey, where he advised global organizations on strategy, innovation, and scaling new ventures. Sovra applies that background to a problem he watched play out at home in Lebanon.
The investor list gives a sense of the confidence behind the round. Beyond lead investor Pharsalus Capital, the angels include Karim Atiyeh, founder of the US spend-management company Ramp, Hisham Al-Falih, founder of Lean Technologies, Hany Rashwan, founder of 21Shares, and Naguib S. Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Development Holding AG. These are founders and figures who have built financial and crypto businesses themselves, which matters for a young company trying to prove it can handle money safely.
Learn more about Sovra.
