Global investment bank Goldman Sachs and French general bank BNP Paribas have reportedly led a new financing round for Fnality, a blockchain-based wholesale payment company backed by Nomura Group.
As reported by Reuters On November 13, Fnality raised 77.7 million British pounds ($95.09 million) in a second round of funding. In addition to Goldman and BNP Paribas, payment companies such as Euroclear and Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation also participated in the fundraising. Other investors include exchange-traded fund company WisdomTree and Nomura, a former Fnality investor.
Additional investments were also made by seed round financiers Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, ING, Lloyds Banking Group, Nasdaq Ventures, State Street, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and UBS. As previously reported in June 2019 UBS and other global banks We invested £55 million ($63.2 million) in Fnality to launch a blockchain-based trade settlement platform.
The new capital will be used to create a 24-hour global liquidity management network for new digital payment models in wholesale financial markets and emerging tokenized asset markets, Fnality reported. This increase also paves the way for the debut of the Fnality sterling payment system in 2023, subject to approval by the Bank of England.
Mathew McDermott, Goldman’s global head of digital assets, said Fnality’s application of blockchain technology allows institutions to use central bank funds in many potential use cases. These include “instant, cross-border and cross-currency payments, collateral mobility and security transactions,” he said.
Fnality was founded in 2019 as a UBS-led blockchain project to create digital versions of major currencies for wholesale payments and transactions involving digital securities. Notably, the company was initially launched as part of the Utility Settlement Coin, or USC, project, which was designed to tokenize fiat currencies such as the US dollar or euro on a blockchain built on Ethereum.
Other global banks, such as multinational banking company JPMorgan, are also actively exploring blockchain and tokenization. In early November, JPMorgan launched a new programmable payment feature for institutional investors on its JPM Coin platform.

Translation by Walter Rizzo