A London-based fintech firm, Fnality, has successfully secured $136 million in its latest Series C funding round, aimed at enhancing its blockchain-based wholesale payment systems. The investment round was notably backed by heavyweight financial firms including WisdomTree, Bank of America, Citi, KBC Group, Temasek, and Tradeweb. Existing investors such as Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Barclays also contributed to this financial boost.
Earlier this year, Fnality raised $95 million, led by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas, underscoring the growing interest in its innovative approach. The company’s unique settlement infrastructure leverages distributed ledger technology, allowing for on-chain processing of sterling payments using central bank money. With the fresh capital, Fnality plans to develop similar capabilities for additional currencies, improve liquidity management tools, and support the settlement of tokenized assets, which include securities and stablecoins.
The firm’s technology enables real-time trade settlements, facilitating delivery-versus-payment for digital securities and payment-versus-payment for foreign exchange transactions. This could significantly reduce the need for intermediaries, speed up settlement times, and optimize capital usage for banks. Notably, transactions such as repo trades, which typically take a day to complete, could be settled instantly, thus freeing up cash for further transactions.
Fnality’s CEO, Michelle Neal, emphasized that this funding represents a crucial step towards creating a “hybrid future of global finance,” where traditional financial institutions can seamlessly interact with emerging decentralized markets. Investors like WisdomTree and Bank of America view this initiative as part of a larger movement to modernize financial infrastructure for the growing realm of tokenized assets.
