Proptech Advances in Latin America As Loft Raises $175 Million in New Investment

Proptech Advances in Latin America As Loft Raises $175 Million in New Investment

The $175 million in Series C funding raised by Latin American digital real estate platform Loft this week offers an insight into how proptech is providing new investment opportunities within the emerging markets of countries like Brazil and Mexico.

“We’re aiming to reinvent the way people move homes by building the most consumer-focused real estate marketplace,” Loft founder and co-CEO Mate Pencz said. Loft’s digital platform leverages transaction data and machine learning to price apartments at the unit level. This brings both liquidity and transparency to a market the company says suffers from a lack of data transparency, excessively-high selling prices, and long transaction times.

The company plans to also use the funding to fuel its continued growth in Brazil and throughout Latin America. Expansion to Rio de Janeiro is anticipated for early 2020, with Mexico City to follow soon afterward. Loft also plans to grow its product portfolio in the new year to include mortgages and insurance.

“Loft is creating a consolidated source of truth on inventory and transaction prices that has, until now, been fundamentally missing from the Latin American real estate market,” Vulcan Capital general partner Rafael Costa explained. “This, together with Loft’s highly accurate and intelligent pricing tools, is transforming real estate transactions and providing a truly unmatched customer experience for sellers, agents, and buyers,” Costa said. Vulcan’s investment in Loft is the first and only Latin American investment in the company’s portfolio.

TechCrunch’s Anna Escher compared Loft to U.S.-based home-selling marketplace platform Opendoor in her reporting on the funding announcement. And while the San Francisco-based property management technology company has quite the head start, including a $3.8 billion valuation, Loft has made strong strides in its initial year of operation. The company announced more than $150 million in annualized revenues last year and transacted more than 1,000 properties. Beginning with 100 employees, Loft finished 2019 with more than 450 on its team, with plans to add more talent early this year.

Loft competes with firms like QuintoAndar, a SoftBank-funded unicorn based in Brazil, and Mexico’s Flat, which includes investors such as ALLVP and Next Billion Ventures. Proptech represents a modest amount of the overall capital VCs have invested in Latin America, rising to 4% of all VC funding in 2018. Nevertheless, this constituted a sizable increase in both the amount invested (503x) and number of deals (5x) over the previous year, as reported by the LAVCA in its Annual Review of Tech Investment in Latin America. The figure also rivaled investment in other areas such as security & infrastructure, digital security, and e-commerce. Overall, the report indicated that fintech represented 25% of all VC spending in Latin America in 2018.

The investment in proptech Loft also reflects the breadth of funding Latin American fintechs are receiving. Last week, Latin American SME lenders Cora and Rebel made headlines with million dollar fundraisings that will help bring credit to underserved businesses. Challenger banks in Mexico have attracted VC interest, as well, with neobanks Albo and Flink both announcing year-end funding last week.

JPMorgan Chase: More Tokens, Fewer Passwords, Better Security

JPMorgan Chase: More Tokens, Fewer Passwords, Better Security
Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com from Pexels

According to reporting in the Financial Times, JPMorgan Chase is the latest financial institution to pledge a pivot toward tokenization to make it easier and safer for customers to access third party financial solutions. Tokenization enables FIs to securely send only the limited amount of data necessary to complete transactions, and limits the exposure of customer passwords and other sensitive information. The article, by Laura Noonan, highlights a pair of companies – Envestnet |Yodlee and Plaid – and their agreements to use tokenization in their interactions with Chase and other major FIs.

“Our partnership with Chase will allow further consumer choice, reliability, and insight into how and where their data is being used, along with improved overall financial well-being,” Envestnet | Yodlee CEO Stuart DePina said when his company’s deal was announced last December. “As we move toward API-based connectivity in the United States, relationships like the one we have with Chase are laying the groundwork for this reality by giving consumers greater connectivity across their financial accounts, all accomplished through these types of secure and protected channels.”

The move also represents Chase’s most recent strike against screen scraping, with the FI has long opposed out of concerns that the practice was exploitative of customer data. Noonan’s article notes JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon who decried the way “many third parties sell or trade information in a way customers may not understand, and the third parties, quite often, are doing it for their own economic benefit – not for the customer’s” in a shareholder letter in 2016.

On Finovate.com

  • The CA Consumer Privacy Act Went into Effect While You Were on Vacation – If you’re unfamiliar with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), you might want to stop catching up on email you missed over the holiday and focus on this new regulation. Here are a few highlights of California’s new law, which went into effect yesterday.
  • Wall Street to Exiting Fintechs: Show Us the Profits – What does the fintech landscape look like for startups in 2020? Among all the forecasts and predictions we’ve been reading and re-reading, is reporting from the Wall Street Journal that suggests that fintech startups seeking successful exits may face tougher challenges in 2020 than in 2019.
  • B-North Lands $2.6 Million Ahead of Launch – E.U.-based alternative lending company B-North announced this week it landed $2.6 million (£2 million) in new funding. The investment comes as part of crowdfunding efforts via Crowdcube and Growthfunders.
  • Finovate Global: Solaris Bank to Secure CryptoCurrencies; Brazilian Fintechs Announce New Funding

Alumni in the News

  • Mastercard snaps up RiskRecon.
  • Lendio recognized as one of the best places to work by Glassdoor.
  • iProov CEO Andrew Bud earns Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) status from Queen Elizabeth as part of his work in driving technology innovation in the U.K.
  • Standard Chartered appoints Rene Keller as CIO of CCIB.
  • Ayondo chairman resigns.

If you are a Finovate alum, please send us your news and announcements by Friday noon, Pacific Time, in order to be featured in our weekly Alumni in the News roundup.

Solaris Bank to Secure Cryptocurrencies; Brazilian Fintechs Announce New Funding

Join us next month in Berlin, Germany for FinovateEurope 2020. Our three-day fintech conference will begin on February 11 and run through February 13.

The event features both our signature, seven-minute, live technology demonstrations, as well as keynote addresses, roundtables, and case studies on many of the most critical issues in fintech. Check out our conference agenda and stay tuned for more about our speakers and demoing companies.

Here’s our weekly look at fintech around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Austrian mobile payments firm Bluecode raises $13.4 million (€12 million) from European Private Venture Capitalists.
  • German fintech Solaris Bank announces plans to offer custodial services to cryptocurrency investors.
  • Ukraine’s mobile-only bank Monobank to expand to the U.K. in 2020.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • IBM brings its fraud prevention technology to Qatar International Islamic Bank.
  • PYMNTS looks at the opportunities PSD2 may offer Turkish banks.
  • Egypt-based fintech Dayra wins $15,000 grant from Y Combinator’s Startup School, the first MENA-based startup to do so.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Business Recorder interviews Syed Mohsin Ahmed, CEO of Pakistan Microfinance Network.
  • Fintech Singapore lists India’s top fintech influencers for 2020.
  • Makers India highlights five women who are driving fintech innovation in India.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Born2Invest examines the impact of mobile money on Argentina’s banking industry.
  • Brazilian fintech Cora raises $10 million in funding to help provide financial services to SMEs.
  • Rebel, a startup that helps provide credit to middle-class Brazilians, rakes in $10 million in equity funding.

Asia-Pacific

  • With closing of a 70% stake in China’s GoPay, PayPal is the first non-Chinese firm licensed to offer payment services in the country.
  • FIS’ global ecommerce platform, Worldpay, partners with Japanese issuer and acquirer JCB.
  • Who are the top contenders in Singapore’s digital banking race? Fintech Singapore reviews the field.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Micro-investing startup Trove picks up an investment from Nigerian asset management company, ARM.
  • Kontomatik’s Konstantin Rabin looks at South Africa’s position as an “unlikely fintech leader.”
  • Julaya, a startup based in Ivory Coast that specializes in digitizing financial services for small businesses, raises $550,000 in funding..

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Top image designed by Freepik

Wall Street to Exiting Fintechs: Show Us the Profits

Wall Street to Exiting Fintechs: Show Us the Profits

What does the fintech landscape look like for startups in 2020? Among all the forecasts and predictions we’ve been reading and re-reading, is reporting from the Wall Street Journal that suggests that fintech startups seeking successful exits may face tougher challenges in 2020 than in 2019.

As the Journal’s Yuliya Chernova reports, in 2019, only three U.S.-based, VC-backed, fintech startups went public: Bill.com, Oportum, and Sezzle – two of which are Finovate alums. Even so, this tops the previous year’s total of two such firms: EverQuote and Green Sky.

“Venture investors value startups on growth, but Wall Street wants to see profits,” Chernova begins. She goes on to note how observers and analysts alike are citing the failure of WeWork and the stock struggles of newly-public companies like Uber and Lyft as indications that the affection – and capital – that VCs poured into these tech innovators may not be shared by an increasingly cynical Wall Street investing community.

As Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn noted in a post titled “M&A is the New IPO,” last summer, there are a wealth of reasons why fintechs have found successful exits more challenging at this end of the decade. She wrote that between the availability of VC funding, and M&A opportunities on the one hand, and the cost and “bad track record” of fintech IPOs on the other, a growing number of fintechs are figuring out that it is often better to saddle up with a fellow traveler than to try and “go it alone” in the public markets.

Writing in the Digital Banking Report, publisher Jim Marous summed it up: “(W)hy would successful fintechs, who appear to have a bottomless pit of funding at their disposal, subject themselves to the massive scrutiny that comes from going public? Fintech firms don’t see a slowdown of the funding fire hose and have no desire to lose control of their vision.”

Just to get a sense of the flow from that “funding fire hose,” CB Insights reported in December that fintech startups last year raked in more than $24 billion in funding through Q3 of 2019. This represents a gain of 500% since 2014. The firm’s Global Fintech Report Q3 2019, highlights the record-setting fundraising by Southeast Asian fintechs, and notes that the $12.9 billion raised by U.S. fintechs through Q3 2019 had already topped the previous year’s full-year tally of $12.5 billion. European fintechs similarly outperformed, bringing in $5.1 billion in VC funding through Q3 2019 compared to $3.8 billion in all of 2018.

And for those who feel as if this fintech funding flow is evidence of an unsustainable bubble rather than healthy – if not vigorous – growth, fintech analyst and Forbes senior contributor Ron Shevlin suggests looking closer.

“Ignore the pessimistic view,” he wrote. “Dismissing opportunities for further fintech investment is short-sighted … The margin opportunity in banking today isn’t necessarily coming up with a ‘better’ bank, but instead, helping to improve banks profitability. Opportunities for fintech startups abound within banks.”‘

For a look at the recent capital-raising accomplishments of our own Finovate alums, check out our year-end feature, Finovate Alums Raise More than $3 Billion in 2019.

MoEngage Helps India’s Biggest Online Supermarket Keep Customers

MoEngage Helps India’s Biggest Online Supermarket Keep Customers

A new partnership between intelligent customer engagement platform MoEngage and bigbasket, the largest online supermarket in India, is the latest example of how automation and AI are helping merchants increase customer loyalty.

The San Francisco, California-based company, which demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall in September, will enable bigbasket to send personalized offers, recommendations, and order updates to its customers over multiple channels including push, email, in-app messaging, web push, and SMS.

Two of MoEngage’s solutions will play an especially big role in helping bigbasket enhance its customer retention efforts. MoEngage’s journey builder solution, Flows, will enable bigbasket to leverage automated workflows to send highly-relevant marketing messages to customers based on their preferences and transaction history. MoEngage’s AI Engine, Sherpa, will automatically optimize the content of marketing messages and determine the ideal time to send those messages in order to maximize open rates.

The importance of message consistency and personalization was underscored by bigbasket Head of Digital Marketing Anand Bhaskaran who called it “key” to improving customer retention. “We hope to leverage MoEngage’s capabilities to segment our customer base, map their journey, craft personalized messages at each stage of our customer’s lifecycle, and automatically deliver these messages at the right time.”

MoEngage CEO and co-founder Raviteja Dodda agreed. “We are confident that MoEngage’s product features such as Flows, Sherpa, and Push Amplification+ will not only help bigbasket increase its reach, but also provide a personal touch to their communications across the web, mobile, and email,” Dodda said.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Bangalore, India, bigbasket delivers food, groceries, and other household needs to more than 15 million registered customers. With more than 30,000 products from 1,000+ brands, and a presence in 26 cities across India, bigbasket has raised $1 billion in funding from investors including Alibaba Group and Trifecta Capital Advisors.

December marks a a big end-of-year for MoEngage. In addition to its partnership with bigbasket, the company unveiled a new Single Sign-On feature this month, which will bring users improved security as well as easier access control. Recently achieving Amazon Web Services Retail Competency status, the company also earned recognition in the 2019 Gartner “Voice of the Customer” report for Mobile Marketing Platforms as the highest overall rated vendor.

Delivering more than 25 billion highly personalized messages each month, MoEngage has more than 550 customers in 35 countries, and includes many Fortune 500 brands among its clients. The company has raised $15.8 million in funding, and its investors include Matrix Partners India, VenturEast, Helion Venture Partners, and Startup Equity Partners – which led a venture round for MoEngage at the beginning of the year.

Minna Technologies Teams Up with OP Financial Group

Minna Technologies Teams Up with OP Financial Group

Minna Technologies, a Swedish banking tech start-up, has sealed a partnership deal with OP Financial Group, Finland’s largest financial group, reports Tanya Andreasyan of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The two companies first started working together in 2018 at OP’s Open Banking Startup Partnership Programme, and the latest deal is the extension of that collaboration.

Minna Technologies is an authorised Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) and Account Information Service Provider (AISP), operating under the supervision of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA).

Using Minna’s tech, OP will be able to better to capitalize on its Open Banking Strategy and PSD2 APIs developed for third-party providers, the vendor says. CEO Joakim Sjöblom described OP as “a leader in the Finnish market in terms of innovation, customer focus, and delivery of excellent customer experience.”

“This partnership is a great example of the importance of finding the right match in partners,” said Masa Peura, SVP of payments and personal finance management at OP, adding that the bank was “impressed by Minna Technologies’ innovation and technical capabilities.”

As for the tech firm, taking part in OP’s start-up program was “a great opportunity to get to know the OP organization, validate the technical approach, as well as the need for subscription management in the Finnish market,” said John Nyström, country manager for Finland at Minna Technologies.

Starting as a consumer application for subscription management (Mina Tjänster) in 2016, Minna Technologies has grown since to become an integrated platform for retail banks and service providers in the Nordics to improve the digital banking experience.

The company said its subscription management platform has saved more than €30 million on behalf of its users. Swedbank, SpareBank 1 and Danske Bank are all on its client list.

Minna Technologies demonstrated its subscription management platform for banks to offer to their customers, Minna Tech, at FinovateEurope 2019. The technology provides users with an automated overview of their subscription accounts and all recurring charges, making it easier for them to cancel unwanted subscriptions as well as switch to other providers that offer a better value for their services.

Minna Technologies has raised $6.2 million in funding from investors including Zenith Group and Swedbank.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Dwolla announces the latest addition to its partner ecosystem, Productify.
  • Onfido partners with Estonian legal entity verification solution provider Entify.
  • Anorak Technologies unveils new distribution team.
  • ThetaRay taps Edward Sander as its new Chief Product Officer.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

MassChallenge’s 2020 Fintech Accelerator Class Features Finovate Alums

MassChallenge’s 2020 Fintech Accelerator Class Features Finovate Alums

Six Finovate alums innovating in fields ranging from life event planning to small business lending are among the 34 startups that will participate in the upcoming 2020 MassChallenge FinTech program. In addition to mentorship from and collaboration with leading enterprise partners, startups will get access to free office space and the opportunity to compete for equity-free cash prizes as part of their six-month engagement.

Calling this year’s cohort part of the “exciting future of fintech,” MassChallenge Fintech Managing Director Devon Sherman said the incoming class “represents a revolutionary approach to financial services” and added that his team was “blown away by the vision of these entrepreneurs.”

Making the cut among Finovate alums are:

See the full roster of incoming startups to the 2020 cohort.

“Thanks for including Hydrogen in MassChallenge 2020,” the company wrote on Twitter. “It is a great honor. We look forward to working with all of the enterprise partners and startups in the program.”

“LendingFront is proud to be participating in the 2020 MassChallenge Fintech program,” the company tweeted. “We will be working with the City of Boston and several New England financial institutions to use our technology to improve how small businesses get access to capital.”

And from InterGen Data, one of our newest alums, company CEO Robert Kirk expressed his enthusiasm for the opportunity as well. “I believe that by working with our enterprise partner, we will be able to redefine the client experience, improve the lives of their clients, and deliver on the promise of how artificial intelligence and machine learning can vastly improve their financial journey,” Kirk said.

The MassChallenge accelerator program is supported by a public-private partnership including founding partners Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments, Citizens Bank, John Hancock, and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership (MACP), as well as numerous challenge partners.

The program runs from January to June, and focuses on one-on-one “outcome-driven” partnerships between program participants and program partners. Together, the startup and the partnering company work to develop solutions for specific challenges while helping the startup coming scale its business.

Now in its second year, MassChallenge’s fintech program produced a 2019 cohort in which 70% of participants launched a pilot or proof of concept within a year. “Our inaugural year achieved promising results in driving international partnerships between fintech startups and our enterprise partners,” Sherman said. He added that he was excited “to build on that success in 2020.”

Founded in 2010, and offering an accelerator in healthtech as well, MassChallenge has worked with more than 2,000 startups, who have raised collectively more than $5 billion in funding and generated more than $2.7 billion in revenue. MassChallenge is U.S.-based, with offices in Boston, Rhode Island, and Texas, as well as Israel and Mexico.

Bankjoy Unveils a Trio of New Credit Union Customers

Bankjoy Unveils a Trio of New Credit Union Customers

Michigan-based digital banking solution provider Bankjoy is ending the year with three new credit union partners. The company, which demonstrated its API at FinovateFall 2016, announced this week that three credit unions in Indiana and Texas with a combined $500+ million in assets and more than 50,000 members, will join its technology ecosystem of online and mobile banking solutions.

The credit unions teaming up with Bankjoy are Mobility CU and Las Colinas FCU – both of Irving, Texas – as well as Fort Financial CU of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Mobility CU has $223 million in assets and 16,500 members. Las Colinas FCU has $73 million in assets and 9,800 members. Fort Financial CU has $237 million in assets and 26,800 members.

Las Colinas’ FCU President/CEO Kevin Scott noted that the ability to deliver a robust mobile experience to members was a key factor in partnering with Bankjoy. The mobile experience, he said, must be able keep up with what customers are already enjoying from platforms like Amazon and Google if credit unions expect to compete. In that regard, Scott explained, “Bankjoy’s vision for their digital platform is closely aligned with our own.”

Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan added that the company’s technology is designed to help credit unions succeed “today and well into the future, as products, services, and platforms continue to evolve at a rapid pace.” Bankoy’s platform offers online and mobile banking with built-in financial goal management, and the company’s marketing technology enables firms to issue highly-relevant advertising and information to customers and members across all digital channels. This includes voice, which Duncan recently demonstrated during a segment on CU Broadcast.

Mobility CU President/CEO Ron Perry specifically highlighted this aspect of the partnership, and said he looked forward to integrating with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Perry also pointed to the opportunity to grow deposits and loans by leveraging Bankjoy’s account opening and loan application processing technology.

Founded in 2015, Bankjoy made its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateFall. Headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, the company offers an advanced banking API that enables financial institutions from flagship banks to credit unions to offer digital onboarding, mobile and online banking, online loan origination, and conversational AI-enabled services.

In addition to the partnerships announced this week, Bankjoy teamed up with financial literacy specialist Zogo Finance in November to help credit unions better attract Generation Z customers. Also that month, Bankjoy announced that Pyramid FCU, Cooperative Teachers FCU, and Mutual 1st FCU – with a combined $382 million in assets and 34,8000 members in Arizona, Texas, and Nebraska – would join its technology ecosystem.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Zenus Bank to deploy onboarding authentication technology from Fortress Identity.
  • Paystand to provide an end-to-end payments platform for customers of Japanese payment card issuer and acquirer, JCB.
  • Blackhawk Network introduces new SVP of Global Commerce, Brett Narlinger.
  • Ovum highlights Quadient and its leadership role in providing customer journey mapping in its report, Customer Journey Management’s Path to Optimization.
  • Forbes Senior Contributor Ron Shevlin gives TransferWise an “Honorable Mention” among the Winners in his review of the Winners and Losers in Fintech this year.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Investors Flock to Mexican Neobanks; Ant Financial, Ali Baba Ink Pact with ICBC

The challenger bank revolution is alive and well in Mexico. This week, three upstart financial institutions in the Latin American country were the recipients of a combined $20+ million in funding. The investments are a testament to the way local entrepreneurs are seizing the opportunity to provide banking services to a growing number of previously underbanked people in Mexico.

For some observers, Mexican banks have long been ripe for disruption. A 2017 feature in The Financial Times cited a Gallup poll in which more than three in four customers in Mexico were “indifferent to, or unhappy with their bank.” The same article noted that challenger banks and other fintechs could take as much as 30% of the Mexican banking market in the next ten years due to inefficiencies in the current banking system. Incumbents have also been criticized for a lack of outreach to the underbanked, to younger potential customers, and to the digitally savvy.

Check out Thiago Paiva’s in-depth look at the Mexican neobank market – and how some incumbents are fighting back – published at TechCrunch this fall. Paiva is product manager at Oyster, a challenger bank for Latin American SMEs.

Here’s our weekly look at fintech around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Trulioo goes live with its GlobalGateway in Nigeria and Ghana.
  • Disrupt-Africa looks at the expansion and fundraising plans of South African payments startup Airbuy.
  • Kenyan insurtech firm Turaco closes $2.1 million seed funding round.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Wefox, an insurtech based in Berlin, Germany, locks in $110 million extension to its Series B round.
  • Based in Latvia and founded in Russia, Robocash announces plans to raise $5 million in funding over the next six month to support expansion to SE Asia.
  • An AML startup founded by former workers at TransferWise and Skype, Estonia’s Salv has raised $2 million in seed funding.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • National Bank of Fujairah, based in the UAE, readies for the launch of its new SME banking platform.
  • Oman’s Bank Muscat introduces $100 million fintech investment program.
  • UAE fintech FlexxPay locks in an investment from Wamda.

Central and Southern Asia

  • ZestMoney, an Indian fintech specializing in providing credit assessment and financing for the underbanked, raises $14 million as part of an extended Series B round featuring participation by Goldman Sachs.
  • Delhi, India-based SME lender LivFin secures in $5 million in growth funding.
  • What can Central Asian companies learn from Southeast Asia when it comes to building a fintech industry?

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican neobank Albo adds $17 million to its Series A, taking the round’s total to more than $26 million.
  • Flink, a Mexico-based challenger bank, receives seed funding from Spanish fintech Latina.
  • Challenger bank Fondeadora reels in $2.5 million in funding.

Asia-Pacific

  • Ant Financial and Alibaba ink strategic payments partnership with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).
  • Hong Kong’s WeLab picks up $156 million to fund its digital bank launch in 2020.
  • ZA Bank pilots internet-only banking services in Hong Kong, the first FI to do so in the city.

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Top image designed by Freepik

Ripple Raises $200 Million in Series C Investment

Ripple Raises $200 Million in Series C Investment

In a Series C led by Tetragon, payments innovator Ripple has picked up an investment of $200 million. Featuring participation from SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures, the round takes the Ripple’s total capital to more than $321 million, and gives the firm a valuation of $10 billion.

In a statement, company CEO Brad Garlinghouse explained that the funding will help fuel expansion of the company’s “open developer platform for money” Xpring, as well as enable Ripple to add talent to the team.

“We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision,” Garlinghouse said. “As others in the blockchain space have slowed their growth or even shut down, we have accelerated our momentum and industry leadership throughout 2019.”

The funding is timely for Xpring, which Ripple recently configured to make it easier for both crypto and non-crypto developers to add payments functionality into mobile apps. The new platform leverages Ripple’s XRP Ledger, Interledger, and Web Monetization technologies that give developers tools, services, and programs that empower them to develop and power wallets and exchanges, as well as take advantage of monetization opportunities in content and gaming.

The investment also comes as Ripple completes a year in which its RippleNet global payments network added more than 300 customers. Additionally, Ripple’s $50 million dollar strategic partnership with MoneyGram, announced this summer, has enabled the company to demonstrate how its On-Demand Liquidity solution leverages Ripple’s digital asset XRP to help MoneyGram boost volume on international money transfers. As of November, MoneyGram reported that is moving 10% of its Mexican peso trading volume via Ripple’s technology.

“Our partnership with Ripple is transformative for both the traditional money transfer and digital asset industry,” MoneyGram Chairman and CEO Alex Holmes said. “For the first time ever, we’re settling currencies in seconds.”

Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, introduced the Ripple protocol at FinovateSpring 2013 via a company called OpenCoin. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Ripple began the year by earning a spot on the 2019 Forbes Fintech 50 Roster. In addition to its partnership with MoneyGram, Ripple announced in August that PNC, the eighth largest bank in the U.S. had begun using its RippleNet network for cross-border payments – the first U.S. bank to do so.

On the international front this year, Ripple has teamed up with Vietnam’s TPBank, partnered with Brazilian brokerage Frente Corretora de Cambio, and inked a cross-border remittance agreement with India’s Federal Bank.