UK-based financial technology firm, Fnality, announced that it has successfully raised £77.7 million ($95.09 million) in its second round of funding. The investment round was backed by prominent financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, DTCC, Euroclear, Nomura, and WisdomTree.
The funding comes as Fnality awaits regulatory approval from the Bank of England to initiate its operations. The company wants to reduce the time and cost associated with settling, managing collateral, and conducting payments for financial market transactions between traditional and digital finance.
Fnality International is a consortium of major financial institutions that aims to address challenges in financial markets by enabling a seamless global liquidity management ecosystem and empowering new digital payment models for transactions in both wholesale financial markets and emerging tokenized asset markets.
The consortium members took a step toward building the system to enable ‘on-chain’ payments by investing in the creation of Fnality International. Fnality International is developing a new payment system, Fnality Global Payments (FnGP), which will enable tokenized, peer-to-peer markets.
It will comprise a series of national systems, each regulated in its home jurisdiction, with a Fnality settlement asset acting as the settlement or payment asset for various payment needs. The system aims to provide unprecedented levels of operational resilience and availability, thanks to the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Beyond Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas led the funding round, emphasizing their confidence in Fnality’s mission to revolutionize the financial industry through blockchain technology. In addition to Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas, other participants in the funding round include settlement houses DTCC and Euroclear, as well as Nomura and WisdomTree.
Notably, Fnality received additional investments from its initial round backers, including Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, ING, Lloyds Banking Group, Nasdaq Ventures, State Street, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and UBS.
Matthew McDermott, Goldman’s global head of digital assets, praised Fnality’s application of blockchain, stating that it provides a resilient solution for institutions to utilize central bank funds across various use cases, including instantaneous cross-border payments, collateral mobility, and security transactions.
Fnality plans to utilize the raised capital to establish a “world-first” round-the-clock global liquidity management network. This network will cater to new digital payment models in both wholesale financial markets and emerging tokenized asset markets.
