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Deutsche Telekom, HKT and other telecom firms back blockchain startup Clear’s $13M Series A round

Thu, 06 Feb 2020, 07:24 am UTC

Israel-based blockchain startup Clear has raised $13 million in a Series A financing round led by Eight Roads, TechCrunch reported.

Telefónica Innovation Ventures, Telekom Innovation Pool of Deutsche Telekom, Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) and Singtel Innov8 also participated in the round. Eight Roads’ Fintech Strategic Investments head Alokik Advani will be joining the startup’s board.

Founded in 2018, Clear is focused on building blockchain-based settlement and clearing networks to remove the friction in the B2B trade, which is largely manual and prone to errors at present. It has created an environment where smart B2B contracts can be created and executed automatically, thereby enhancing efficiency and driving new revenue opportunities across industries.

As per the report, the strategic investment from telecom companies is not a coincidence. One of the early use cases for Clear’s blockchain transaction network is, in fact, targeted at this sector. It involves moving payments between telecom companies around the world.

Clear co-founder Gal Hochberg explained that the platform basically converts commercial contracts into digital representations, or smart contracts.

“What that lets us do is create a trusted view of the true status of the relationship within the company’s business partners because they’re now looking at the same pricing and usage. They can find any issues in real time, either in commercial information or in service delivery, and they can even actually resolve those inside our platform,” Hochberg said.

This means that companies are no longer required to wait until the end of the month to detect errors and start a resolution process. Instead, they can do this in real time, thereby reducing time to payment and accelerating conflict resolution.

“We use blockchain technology to create those interactions in ways that it is auditable, cryptographically secure and ensures that both sides are synced and seeing the same information,” Hochberg said.

Clear intends to use the funding to go into full carrier-grade production in the first half of this year. The company also plans to expand into other verticals beyond the telecom industry.

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