Blockchain Payments Firm Fnality Raises $95.2 Million

Blockchain-based wholesale payment systems firm Fnality has raised $95.2 million in a new funding round.

The round, as reported Tuesday (Nov. 14) by Bloomberg News, was led by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas.

CEO Rhomaios Ram told Bloomberg the company will use the investment to fund the operations and functionality of the British pound-based version of its system.

The report noted that Fnality is building digital versions of major currencies for wholesale payments and transactions that involve digital securities.

While it has taken longer than planned to get its products on the market, Ram said his firm expects to begin initial operations of its Sterling payment system by the end of the year, assuming it receives regulatory approval. PYMNTS wrote last March that the company had planned to launch that system in September of 2022.

“It was not easy to get this round closed, but the fact they [the investors] put money is pretty significant,” Ram said. “It feels like there are small pockets of optimism emerging, and this is an indication of that.”

The Bloomberg report said Ram declined to reveal the valuation of his company following the funding round.

PYMNTS last month examined the way blockchain technology is being steadily embraced by the financial sector, despite the troubles in the cryptocurrency space.

“The true intrinsic value of blockchain, which is around programmability of transactions, immutability of transactions, and the ability to do delivery versus payment and always-on types of payments, has yet to be unlocked,” Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Jorn Lambert told PYMNTS in July.

“There’s a huge global trend going on right now into exploring the intricacies, complexities, difficulties and benefits of leveraging the properties of DLT for the financial system,” Daniel Field, global head of blockchain at UST, said in a separate PYMNTS interview in July.

And as Pat Thelen, vice president of global account management at Ripple, said in a conversation here last month, “innovation is relentless. And innovation and competition will find a way to apply the technology that is already here. The technology is ready now. You have commercial banks, central banks and institutional players leaning in.”