Barclays, the Mastercard Foundation and Ripple have joined in a $1.7 million funding round for overseas remittance startup SendFriend.
The company, an alumni of Barclays’ accelerator programme, has stuck an agreement with Ripple to use XRP as a liquidity vehicle for cross-border payments, enabling SendFriend to circumvent the corresponding banking system and convert USD to XRP to PHP in a matter of seconds.
Other companies joining the round include MIT Media Labs, Techstars, Mahindra Finance, 2020 Ventures and 8 Decimal Capital.
“This is a highly competitive space with longtime incumbents, but we are confident in the success of SendFriend,” says Yuan Ruan, founder of 8 Decimal Capital. “SendFriend has a good combination of an experienced team, large $650 billion remittance market, investors that provide more than just capital, and a growth strategy focused on more than revenue from transactions including APIs and white-label solutions.”
Editorial | what does this mean?
This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.