UK fintech Fnality raises £77.7m in Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas-led Series B
UK-based blockchain payments firm Fnality has raised £77.7 million in a Series B funding round led by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas as it prepares to launch operations in sterling by the end of the year.
Fnality raises £77.7m in Series B funding round
The fintech’s second round of funding saw the return of many of its Series A investors, including BNY Mellon, UBS, Nasdaq Ventures and State Street, building upon the company’s previous £55 million raise of June 2019.
New investors in its Series B round include DTCC, Euroclear, Nomura and WisdomTree. The fresh cash injection brings Fnality’s total capital raised to £132.7 million since launch.
Founded in 2019 by a consortium of banks including Banco Santander and Barclays, the fintech is seeking to build a digital cash system for financial market and tokenised asset transactions, and was previously known as the utility settlement coin (USC) project.
The Fnality Payment System (FnPS) uses a central bank digital currency (CBDC) asset to complete wholesale payments with near-instant settlement.
Fnality says it will apply the fresh capital to launch initial Sterling Fnality Payment System (£FnPS) operations this year, pending regulatory approval.
The company previously engaged in a proof of concept using FnPS with NatWest and Santander, completing a cross-chain pilot debt transaction on the Ethereum blockchain in February 2022.
The system has also been tested in tokenised securities settlement, cross-border FX swaps and repo transactions.
Rhomaios Ram, CEO of Fnality International, says the result of the Series B signals the sector’s “desire for a central bank money-backed, blockchain-based settlement solution”.
“Each FnPS utilises DLT to provide a 24/7 payment rail with the ability to reduce settlement cycles to real-time, while significantly improving intraday liquidity management and marking significant innovation in the speed, functionality and resilience of wholesale payments,” he adds.
