Fnality International, the UK-based developer of a settlement and clearance facilitation platform, raised £50m ($63.2m) in series A funding from investors including stock exchange operator Nasdaq on Monday, Cointelegraph has reported.
Financial services firms Banco Santander, Barclays, Bank of New York Mellon, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, ING, KBC, Lloyds, MUFG Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, State Street Corporation and UBS also took part in the round.
Founded in April 2019, Fnality represents the commercialisation of the Utility Settlement Coin (USC) project, which was first proposed by UBS and blockchain technology researcher Clearmatics in 2015 to handle the clearing and settlement of digital currencies.
The company’s existence emerged last month when Reuters revealed a host of banks were involved in the research and development of USC. HSBC and Deutsche Bank were taking part at an earlier stage but chose not to invest in the business.
Fnality will launch a digital currency called USC that will be fully backed and guaranteed by a given central bank’s fiat currency. It will seek to conform with local legal and regulatory requirements and form a regulated network to facilitate transfers.
USC will initially support five fiat currencies – US dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro, British pound sterling and Japanese yen – but hopes to add more in future, making it easier and cheaper to transfer money internationally.
Fnality expects its USC token to be fully operational within a year, chief executive Rhomaios Ram told the Wall Street Journal this week.
