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Fintech startup and banking and API payment platform Sila has closed a $7.7 million seed funding round.
According to the press release, the round is led by Hope Cochran of Madrona Venture Group and Rick Hold of Oregon Venture Fond. Both are joining Sila’s board as part of the investment. Also part of the rounds were Mucker Capital, 99 Tartans, Taavet Kinrikus, CEO & Co-founder of Transferwise, and investor & entrepreneur Jerry Neumann.
The funds will be used to accelerate growth and introduce new product features to provide software developers with easier access to the global financial system. Sila wants to start a new era of financial innovation that will benefit both the consumers and businesses because it believes that the current financial system needs to be fixed as it is already outdated.
“The global financial system is broken – despite the global payments industry being $1.9T in revenue, it doesn’t serve consumers, small businesses, or the innovators trying to reach them. It is too expensive, inefficient, tightly regulated, and difficult to integrate into FinTech applications,” said Shamir Karkal, Sila CEO & Co-founder.
“This kills fintech innovation at a time when we need it more than ever. Despite money being effectively digital for decades, the world of finance has still not truly been disrupted by the Internet. The global financial system isn’t controlled by PayPal or Stripe, but by 30,000 global banks that still run on outdated payment systems like ACH. Our mission is to unite all the payment systems in one programmable layer to spur the next phase of financial innovation.”
Sila is a payment and banking API structure that is designed to supplant the outdated ACH as a payment choice for companies who need to move money. Sila follows the ERC-10 token protocol and is built on top of Ethereum blockchain which allows it to automatically create smart contracts to speed up the deployment of financial applications.
The combination of APIs, SDKs in multiple programming languages, inherent compliance, and transparent and programmable payment ledger made rapid programming of a variety of fintech and crypto use-cases possible. At present, Sila caters to startups and established businesses including those in the finance, insurance, real estate, and blockchain industries. It will soon add support for card payment, business ID verification, and international payments.
