A borderless decentralized ecosystem providing financial tools among emerging economies, XLD Finance has announced it has successfully raised US$13M during the pre-Series A funding round led by Dragonfly Capital and Infinity Ventures Crypto. The funds will be used to enable XLD Finance to scale its product and engineering teams to accelerate its API and product development efforts. The investment will also be used to expand its network of licensed partner financial institutions and expand its merchant and biller network.
The round saw participation from 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 twenty other investors.
Established in June 2021, XLD Finance is building infrastructure to enable the delivery of financial tools to emerging economies through APIs that bridge web 3.0 and traditional finance. Its core products include crypto-based payments, disbursements, and crypto-to-fiat offramp APIs which allows web3 and crypto projects to offer tools to their users typically available only to traditional financial institutions. XLD Finance currently serves customers in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh, with a total merchant network of over 10,000 and growing.
In January 2022, it launched its first ecosystem project, xSpend, a platform enabling users to spend their GameFi tokens and stablecoins to pay for utility bills, buy mobile credits, and purchase goods and services using only their Metamask, Phantom, or Ronin wallet. This month, XLD Finance is launching OmniX, a crypto disbursement platform that simplifies crypto disbursements allowing guilds and projects to pay thousands of people with crypto in three clicks. XLD Finance’s roadmap includes a crypto settlement API for merchants, an algorithmic stablecoin, and a web3 wallet Software Development Kit (SDK).
“People in emerging economies often encounter barriers that prevent them from creating financial accounts, paying for goods and services without their physical presence, sending money to loved ones cheaply, accessing affordable credit, and building a savings portfolio, hindering them from experiencing a better quality of life. I want to see a future where anyone with a mobile phone or computer and internet access can use “bank-like” financial tools through their favorite DeFi protocol or exchange,” XLD Finance Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ian Estrada said.
XLD Finance’s Co-founders, Ian Estrada and Herbie Fu, leverage extensive experience in financial services and web3.
Ian Estrada has had more than a decade of experience in telecommunications, financial technology, cryptocurrency, and venture capital. Prior to founding XLD Finance, he held senior executive roles in the Philippines in general management, product, and strategy at Globe Telecom, the country’s largest telecommunications company; JG Summit, one of the largest Filipino diversified conglomerates; Cashalo, the largest consumer lending startup in the Philippines; GCash, a leading payments company backed by the Alibaba Group; and BPI Globe BanKO, the microfinance arm of the Bank of the Philippine Islands.
XLD’s Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Herbie Fu, is an early participant in the crypto and DeFi space. He has invested in more than 100 crypto projects, which include YGG, 0x, TrustToken, FTT, Solana, Chainlink, and M1 Network. He was also a co-founder in a $60M San Francisco-based multi strategy crypto fund.
“We believe in XLD’s vision to deliver infrastructure that provides financial inclusion in emerging markets. Through blockchain and decentralization, 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,” says Brian Lu, Founding partner of Infinity Ventures Crypto.
