David Marcus, CEO and cofounder of Lightspark
Lightspark
David Marcus has spent much of his career on making money move closer to the speed, reach and ease of the internet.
As president of PayPal, he helped scale one of the most successful payments businesses. Later, at Facebook, he helped lead Libra (Diem), the company’s failed attempt to build a global digital currency. Now he is revisiting that same ambition with a more grounded thesis—helping businesses embed banking services directly into their products without taking on the burdens of becoming banks.
On Tuesday, Marcus’ Los Angeles-based company Lightspark announced the launch of Grid Global Accounts, a new enterprise banking product that allows platforms to offer branded dollar accounts, stablecoin conversion, Visa debit cards and instant foreign-exchange services across more than 65 countries.
“Global payouts are a huge cost for businesses. They pay other entities that are taking their money and data to move money on their behalf,” says Marcus, 53. “With Grid Global Accounts, we’ve created opportunities for these businesses to turn this big cost structure into a revenue source and preserve their data because the accounts are self-custodial.”
Platforms using the product will be able to issue their own stablecoins and earn yield on the reserves (like Treasurys) backing them. They will also be able to earn transaction fees and FX margin as well as convert instantly between dollars, stablecoins and bitcoin within the account, without relying on an outside exchange. Fees from those conversions will also go to businesses using Grid.
Behind the scenes, Lightspark is handling the operational and regulatory complexity through a network of partners including FDIC-insured banks like Erebor, Cross River Bank and Lead Bank. The relationships cover licensing, compliance, card issuance, regulatory reporting and fraud monitoring.
Marcus says Grid is the culmination of work that began years ago, including ideas his team first pursued at Facebook, before the market and the technology were ready to support them. What has changed, he argues, is the maturity of the surrounding ecosystem. Embedded wallets now allow users to sign up with Google, Apple or passkeys instead of managing crypto keys directly. Regulation has also become clearer, helped by the passage of the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act in July 2025. A flurry of new stablecoin-backed debit cards are accelerating the mainstream adoption of digital dollars.
The launch also underscores how far Lightspark has moved beyond its origins. Founded in 2022 to build infrastructure for the Lightning Network, the payments layer built on top of Bitcoin, the company has raised $175 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm. Lightspark does not disclose financial results, but says it now handles “billions” of dollars in payment volume for companies including Tether, Nubank and SoFi.
Lightspark is also positioning the new product for AI agents. Grid will allow account holders to create auditable operating pockets for those agents, with constraints such as spending limits, approved payees, approval thresholds and instant revocation.
“What I believe is that the interfaces that have been built for clumsy humans are going to be replaced with interfaces for agents,” Marcus says. “And the question is how do you meet in the middle—how do you provide a really good user interface for humans that is also great for agents to use safely and efficiently? And that’s what we’ve built.”
Lightspark is entering an increasingly crowded market. Several companies are pursuing pieces of the same opportunity, including San Francisco-based Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure platform acquired by Stripe last year, and stablecoin heavyweight Circle, which has expanded its offerings for businesses with programmable wallets and other infrastructure tools.