Wells Fargo invests $5M in crypto monitoring firm Elliptic

Financial services giant Wells Fargo has invested $5 million in cryptocurrency surveillance technology firm, Elliptic.

According to a press release, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital has joined Elliptic’s Series B funding round, bringing the amount raised to over $28 million to date. It joins existing investors including SBI Group and Santander InnoVentures.

"We are pleased to participate in Elliptic's Series B financing round and to support their mission of developing innovative risk management solutions," said Basil Darwish, managing director, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital.

Founded in 2013, London-based Elliptic helps identify illicit activities and provides actionable intelligence to cryptocurrency exchanges, brokers, banks and other financial institutions.

"The partnership with our bank investors will further enhance our ability to better understand and work closely with financial institutions around the world to provide them with greater visibility into the crypto asset ecosystem,” said James Smith, CEO at Elliptic.

“Instead of leaving financial institutions in the dark regarding transactions in the emerging crypto asset class, our aim is that Elliptic, working with financial institutions, will shine a light on any crypto asset-linked transaction activity and enable them to manage risk accordingly.”

Elliptic plans to use the funding to hire the resources needed to accelerate the roll-out of a new risk management solution for financial institutions, called Elliptic Discovery.

Purpose-built for banks, the solution has been designed to help financial institutions understand their exposure to crypto-assets, identify customers whose crypto-asset activities are susceptible to money laundering or sanctions risks, and assess the risk profiles and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures of different crypto-asset exchanges, helping them work more closely with these businesses.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo announced back in September that it would be launching its own internal digital currency, called Wells Fargo Digital Cash, on its own first distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. The digital currency is only intended to be used as an internal settlement service.

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