XanPool is a payment infrastructure provider that speeds up fiat and crypto settlements. Today, it announced that it had raised $27 million in a Series A round led by Valar Ventures. CMT Digital, Wise founder Taavet Hinrikus, and existing investors Gumi Gryptos as well as Antler were part of the round.
This funding brings XanPools total funds raised since its inception in 2019 to more than $32 million. TechCrunch's Jeffrey Liu, founder and chief executive officer, said that Series A will consolidate XanPools presence in APAC. It is currently used in 12 countries. The goal is to grow its user base from 500,000 to 10 million by 2022. Its users are both consumers and businesses who want an alternative to traditional payment processors.
XanPools software allows for a non-custodial cryptocurrency-to-crypto network (C2C). This network is composed of liquidity providers including traditional-export businessmen and money service operators.
XanPool does not touch this money. We simply create the software that allows individuals or businesses to automate buying and selling and earn a fee in return.
Liquidity providers' capital is used to settle cryptocurrency and cross-currency transactions. In return, they can earn up to 2% per month. XanPool claims that its C2C network has more than $200 million in liquidity.
Liu said that peer-to-peer reduces counterparty risk because it doesn't involve an intermediary in its C2C transactions and transactions are done without credit or late settlements.
XanPool is based in Hong Kong and has over 400 business partners. These partners include South Korean fintech Toss, ViettelPay in Vietnam; Singapore's electronic fund transfer service PayNow in Indonesia; PayID, which is the fast payments infrastructure created by Australian banks; and Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Faster Payment Service. Their customers have access to XanPool via their apps. XanPool also performs its own KYC.
Liu stated that XanPools users experience is better than traditional custody platforms. They simply need to enter their crypto wallet address and send fiat to local liquidity peer on the C2C network. Then they will receive cryptocurrency directly to their wallets.
Traditional custody platforms require that users send fiat currency to them before they can conduct fiat-crypto trades. Then, they wait for the exchanges to approve withdrawals.
XanPool will continue to offer its infrastructure to third party exchanges, wallets, and decentralized apps instead of launching its app. Liu stated that XanPool's goal is to be similar to SWIFT Network. This will enable settlements without having its own liquidity but it will also be compatible with cryptocurrency, fast payments services, and e-wallets.
