Brazilian FinTech Unicorn CloudWalk Launches Blockchain

CloudWalk, a Brazilian FinTech that manages payments for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), announced Monday (June 27) that it is launching a blockchain of its own.

Last fall, CloudWalk announced a $150 million fundraise that the company said put its market capitalization at $2.15 billion.

In its press release, the company stated that it can handle 500 transactions per second using the blockchain-based system — 70 times the previous volumes it achieved using blockchains including Ethereum and Polygon. The company’s goal is to grow to a capacity of 5,000 transactions per second within the next few months.

Luis Silva, founder and chief executive of the company, said in the release that the newly-available speeds allow merchants using CloudWalk for transactions involving the Brazilian Digital Real stablecoin to receive payments within “up to 2 seconds,” compared to the typical day or so for Mastercard or Visa.

Referring to the Brazilian Digital Real, the company said that it brings “nearly 50,000 users a month to this platform.”

“We believe that the blockchain will replace the entire financial system in the future,” Silva said, adding, “Any developer can enter our blockchain network and create apps. So, it is very easy for other companies to develop solutions for our customers.”

CloudWalk is helping fuel what PYMNTS recently described as Brazil’s emergence as a leader in digital payments adoption in Latin America.

Read more: CloudWalk On Meeting Latin America’s Growing Demand For Digital Payments

“Consumers look for a combination of best price, product and customer experience,” Silva told PYMNTS at the time. “In Brazil, we have been using EMV chip and PIN cards for more than a decade. Now banks are issuing contactless cards, and the central bank launched Pix, the Brazilian instant payment network, with huge success. So basically, contactless payments and Pix are the favorite payment methods here, because they are cheap and fast.”

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