Ripple Closes $55 Million Venture Capital Round

Ripple, the provider of financial settlement services, announced on Thursday (Sept. 15) it completed a $55 million Series B round of financing. Ripple said the funds will be used to accelerate customer growth, pursue strategic partnerships and grow the company’s team internationally.

According to a press release, the venture capitalists that took part in the latest round of fundraising include Standard Chartered, Accenture Ventures, SCB Digital Ventures and SBI Holdings. Additional investors who participated in the round include Santander InnoVentures, the venture arms of CME Group and Seagate Technology and Venture 51.

“Our mission is to make cross-border payments truly efficient for banks and their customers and, in doing so, lay the foundation for an Internet of Value, where the world moves money as easily as information,” said Ripple CEO and Cofounder Chris Larsen in the press release. “We’re thrilled to have these world-class investors joining forces with us to help make this vision a reality.”

Existing Ripple investors include GV (Google Ventures), Andreessen Horowitz, IDG Capital Partners and Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures. Ripple has received a total of over $93 million in funding. Ripple is the only provider of enterprise blockchain solutions and counts 15 of the top 50 global banks as customers. It also has 10 banks in commercial deal phases and over 30 bank pilots completed. In conjunction with the fundraising, the company announced several new banks have joined its global network.

“This investment is part of our commitment to the bank’s digitization agenda. Ripple is one of the most advanced distributed financial technology companies in the industry with a tested and viable solution,” said Alex Manson, global head of transaction banking at Standard Chartered, in the same press release. “Leveraging Ripple’s deep expertise in technology, financial services and compliance, we can codevelop more use cases to better serve our clients and their ecosystems’ needs in an evolving marketplace.”