Brendan Playford, the CEO of Pngme, founded Masa Finance in late 2020 and has raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding. According to a statement, the company seeks to disrupt traditional centralized credit infrastructure by providing individuals, businesses and developers with the tools to access credit.
The ownership of assets, including money and financial data, is the core principle of the system. The system tries to reduce the control of traditional financial institutions such as banks and credit bureaus which have for decades, collected and stored financial information of the world's banked people.
The premise of decentralized finance is not limited to this segment of banked people. Analysts argue that the technology can reach places not covered by financial institutions. The unbanked can have faster access to services with the help of the internet.
Even as Masa Finance targets underserved people, there is still room for collaboration between both worlds.
Masa Finance links traditional financial accounts and assets from credit bureau systems and bank data to users. This connection allows the company to create non-fungible credit reports for users, which they can use to access credit and other financial tools.
The vision that I have had for a long time has been how credit bureaus evolve and what would they look like in the future.
Playford started Pngme, an open finance startup that has raised over $18 million in VC funding, after working in the space for over a decade. In February of last year, he revealed that he was involved in an open finance play and that he was able to offer short-term loans to entrepreneurs in Africa.
Masa Finance is the result of collective ventures. According to Playford, the company is built on three blocks: unlocking financial data, new sources of capital, and allowing individuals to own their credit history and share it with any lender themselves.
Masa's web3 infrastructure works with over 10,000 off-chain data sources from credit bureaus, bank data Aggregators, and alternative data across 78 countries to create on-chain credit scoring for its users.
Masa says it gives developers access to the tools needed to evaluate borrower risk and launch lending products for individuals and businesses.
The world we're building for is where people own their data. This will connect an off-chain world with centralized data to a new on-chain world that will be growing over the next 10 to 20 years, said Playford, who runs Masa with the chief of staff.
Masa says it has on-chain data that covers 26 integrations, opening up a 4.95 billion person market where 70% are credit invisible. The wallets include Metamask, FTX, and FTX.
The reason why they are partnering with credit bureaus is to increase coverage for the most users. We want to bring the next billion people to DeFi by providing credit bureau reports. To do that, you have to support existing infrastructure and partner with those currently in the market, said Playford when asked why Masa chose a hybrid model.
Playford said that Masa is building on Celo and the platform has 36,000 people signed up. Most of its current users are located in sub-Saharan Africa. Users from Uganda and the Philippines are responsible for the highest volume of loans received in Goldfinch.
Goldfinch raises $25M from a16z to power its DeFi lending protocol for borrowers in developing countries
Zero-knowledge private transactions and smart contracts are supported by more than 2200 operators on Masa Finance's live testnet. There are up to 300 developer registration, with seven projects registered to integrate. The company said in a statement that it was the first to offer credit products on the protocol.
Masa claims to have recorded double-digit growth each month since the beginning of the year. The round is from traditional and web3-focused VCs. They include executives from GoldenTree Asset Management and the backers of Pngme. Other investors include Decentranet Intersect VC, Peer VC, and some angel investors.
Manan Mehta, founding general partner of Unshackled, said that it was no accident that Brendan Playford was backed again.
It said in a statement that Masa is going to raise a seed round. The funding will allow the company to hire more engineers, launch the protocol, conduct a public token sale, and bring developers and lenders to the platform.
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