Payments start-up nanopay gets $10m funding boost
I guess the funding is a positive…
Toronto-based payments start-up nanopay has completed its $10 million Series A funding round.
With this financing and the MintChip platform, which nanopay recently acquired from The Royal Canadian Mint, it is developing new business partnerships to “expand the global utility and acceptance” of MintChip.
Laurence Cooke, CEO and founder of nanopay, says its focus is “now on expanding the platform beyond digital cash to a broad range of B2B use cases that have global applications, for example, business-to-consumer disbursements and cross-border payments”.
MintChip’s open API platform provides a solution to store and transfer “any form of digital value” between users instantly and without the need for intermediaries. With the platform, “transactions are final, irrevocable and settled in real-time”. It is designed to work both online and offline.
Participants in the financing round included the merchant banking division of Goldman Sachs, APAGM Services LLC (Andrew Prozes), Jarnac Capital Management and Rohatton.
Give me Liberty Village
In terms of nanopay’s acquisition, the first commercial application of MintChip is in Toronto’s Liberty Village neighbourhood, where consumers shopping or dining at participating merchants can use MintChip to pay for goods and services.
Each customer will receive 20% cashback on all purchases made with MintChip, up to a total value of $50, and will be entered to win MintChip cash prizes every time they use MintChip for person-to-person (P2P) or merchant payments.
On a broader geographical scale, nanopay says that “all Canadians can download and use MintChip to send and receive digital cash with friends and family for free through secure P2P payments”.
