XLD Finance, a borderless decentralised ecosystem that provides financial tools to emerging economies, has raised $13 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Dragonfly Capital and Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC), according to an announcement.
Other investors, including Advance AI, Circle, Digital Currency Group (DCG), IDG Capital, Insignia Venture Partners, Integra Partners, Morningstar Ventures, Openspace Ventures, Sfermion, Shima Capital, Transcend Fund, TrustToken (TUSD), UOB Venture Management, Woo Network, Yield Guild Games (YGG), YOLO Ventures, Emfarsis and 20 others, also joined the round.
The funds will enable XLD Finance to scale its product and engineering teams to accelerate its API and product development efforts, and to expand its network of licensed partner financial institutions as well as merchant and biller network.
Founded in June 2021, XLD Finance is building infrastructure to enable the delivery of financial tools to emerging economies through APIs that bridge web3 and traditional finance. Its core products include crypto-based payments, disbursements and crypto-to-fiat offramp APIs that allow web3 and crypto projects to offer tools to their users typically available only to traditional financial institutions.
XLD Finance serves customers in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh with 10,000 merchants to date.
The company has also launched OmniX, a crypto disbursement platform that simplifies crypto disbursements allowing guilds and projects to pay thousands of people with crypto in three clicks
“We believe in XLD’s vision to deliver infrastructure that provides financial inclusion in emerging markets. Through blockchain and decentralisation, there exists an opportunity to solve the very real global challenge of financial access with less complexity; XLD’s blockchain-based products will become as relevant as more traditional options,” said Brian Lu, founding partner of IVC.
Dragonfly Capital, a crypto-focused investment firm, in May, made a final close of its third venture fund and a feeder vehicle with capital commitments of $650 million, exceeding the original target of $500 million.
Led by Bo Feng, Dragonfly invests in three types of assets — crypto-native funds, protocols and applications and pick-and-shovel tech startups that bridge the decentralised and centralised worlds.
Meanwhile, IVC in February announced the closing of its inaugural fund at $70 million. The vehicle will be one of Taiwan’s first all-crypto, all-token funds to invest in global GameFi, DeFi and web3 innovations.
IVC was founded in August 2021 with the backing of US-based Circle, which provides payments infrastructure for digital currencies; venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG); and metaverse gaming company Animoca Brands.