Craig PornoreyHong Kong-based fintech XanPool recently announced a successful $27M Series A+ round, bringing the total funding for the decentralized payment network to $32M. The funds have been raised from a slew of investors from China, the US and Southeast Asia, signaling the potential of the tech and the ambition of its team.
Let us take a closer look at the team behind XanPool, and the innovative use case of their technology.
Overview of XanPool
XanPool is a Hong Kong-based fintech that develops decentralized payment networks. The company announced it had raised over $27 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Mujin, which will help it expand its operations and develop new products to meet customer needs.
XanPool offers an efficient and cost-effective way for businesses to utilize decentralised payments. It allows users to process payments using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin, provides support for multiple payment gateways across many countries and provides access to major exchanges in order to liquidate payouts.
In addition to the funds raised, XanPool has established strategic partnerships with financial services providers such as NanoPay in Canada and SIMI Payments in the United States. It also has collaborated with leading figures from the borderless finance sector including Ripple’s Head of Global Expansion for South East Asia Scott Gisinand Coinbase engineer Min Kim. This team provides guidance on product design, user experience and positioning for new markets through sharing their expertise on core blockchain topics.
The Founders
Founded by Terence Lam, Xunyang Li and Justin Chow in 2018, Hong Kong-based fintech startup XanPool has raised $27M for its decentralized payment network.
Terence Lam, CEO and Founder of XanPool, is a serial entrepreneur with 18 years of experience in traditional finance. Xunyang Li, Chief Technology Officer and Founder, is a computer engineer and experienced programmer. Justin Chow, Chief Operating Officer and Founder, began his career as a lawyer, and also has a strong background in finance.
Let’s take a closer look at the team behind this amazing venture.
Hong Kong-based fintech XanPool raises $27M for its decentralized payment network
The co-founders of Hong Kong-based fintech XanPool are Chia Hock Lai, Gerald Goh, and Jeff Choi.
Chia Hock Lai, CEO and Co-Founder of XanPool, is the former President of Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) and a multi-award winning entrepreneur. Known to be an early adopter of financial technology and blockchain technology, Chia is highly prominent in the fintech community in Asia. He has held numerous executive positions across the technology industry since 2000.
Gerald Goh was formerly Regional Head of Wealth Advisory at UOB Private Bank before joining XanPool as CTO in 2019. With more than 16 years of international experience in Financial Services and Technology incubation sector, Gerald brings strong technical chops in software engineering and development as well as a deep knowledge for FinTech landscape across Asia Pacific. His mission is to build an efficient DeFi enabled payments solution for banks & merchants alike over blockchain networks such as Ethereum & Hyperledger Fabric distributed ledger technologies that curate customer insights from both customer data & aggregated trends from various industry players.
Jeff Choi first joined the payments landscape back 2012 with Plastiq which had one mission – enable merchants around the world accept any payment method online with no risk or fraud concerns linked to it. With Jeff’s expertise together with cutting edge tech implementation on security measures such as 3d secure etc., he was able to onboard few large tier 1 banks/merchants on board successfully while working with Plastiq prior joining Xan Pool where he challenged himself once again into the payments space leveraging Blockchain technology this time around along with his experience prior. Today with his background he works towards making Payment tools available globally that would not only save money given lack of intermediaries or middleman but also ease bureaucratic processes or often times complicated paperwork by utilizing decentralised networks such as Ethereum & Hyperledger fabric distributed ledger tech powering XANPOOL’ network today!
Vision of Co-Founders
XanPool is a Hong Kong-based fintech company that raised $27 million in March 2021 for its decentralized payment network. The founding team is led by Co-Founders and CEO Jeff Kua and CTO Piyush Ranjan. They started the project to make financial services more accessible and create opportunities to drive mass adoption of the digital asset economy.
The vision of the two Co-Founders was to create a platform that would bridge traditional financial services with blockchain technology. They had a shared interest in allowing more people access to modern finance, but they quickly realized that there are gaps in technology infrastructure, regulations, and user experience.
In addition to building technology infrastructure, Jeff and Piyush wanted XanPool’s solution to also simplify processes such as identity verification, KYC/AML compliance, currency exchange, taxation management and more. This was in an effort to open up the gateways between various countries’ financial systems. Said Jeff Kua: “Creating equal access opportunities around the world is at the heart of our mission.”
Both Jeff and Piyush believed that building infrastructure alone isn’t enough; therefore, they also focused on creating seamless user experience for users from all backgrounds – no matter their place of residence or profession – enabling them to use digital assets as commonplace payment methods or revenue sources like anything else.
The Team
XanPool is a Hong Kong-based fintech that helps people make payments across borders securely and quickly. Founded in 2018, the team behind the innovative payments network recently announced a successful $27M funding round. This money is going to help the company expand its services and bring its revolutionary payment system to more people.
Let’s take a look at the team behind XanPool.
Core Team Members
XanPool is made up of a core team with years of combined experience in the crypto and fintech space. This includes experienced professionals from the venture capital, legal, and software engineering industries. The founding team consists of two core members:
– Prabhat Gupta (Founder & CEO): Prabhat has an extensive background in technology, finance, and business development. He has held leadership roles at several tech startups in India, Japan, and South Korea. Prior to founding XanPool, he held the position of Chief Technology Officer at South Korean digital asset exchange platform Bxat.
– Ajay Oberoi (Founder & COO): Ajay is a seasoned investor specializing in early-stage companies. His professional career spans across venture capital investment firms such as 500 Startups, Alibaba’s venture arm CIBC Innovation Banking Group, Encrypto Ventures and Draper Venture Network. He was also a lawyer before entering into the world of venture capital investments.
Roles of Team Members
The leadership team at Hong Kong-based fintech XanPool comprises of industry veterans and tech innovators who are contributing to the development of the decentralized payment network. Smart contracts and blockchain technology pave the way for this platform to build a user-friendly financial system that connects merchants, customers, and banks.
The founding team includes CEO Hitters Xu; CTO Louis Song; CMO Evelyn Tan; CPO Bo Lu; COO Kevin Liu; VP of Product Fangming Zhang; VP Of Engineering Yifan Bai; VP Of Business Development Kingie Yung and Chief Data Officer Robert Law. They help drive the vision for XanPool which is to make financial transactions more secure, efficient and cost effective.
Xu serves as the CEO and brings with him vast experience in blockchain technology as well as in leading product innovation teams. As CTO, Song leads the development of various features within XanPool’s products while helping define the product roadmap. Tan is responsible for improving customer engagement with customers and strengthening market penetration of products into new verticals. She also oversees public relations activities among many other tasks at hand.
Lu has been leading efforts on developing payment supply-chain solutions while also strategizing global roll out plans beyond Asia Pacific region where it is currently operating in 10 countries. Liu oversees customer success, strategy & upstream global expansion initiatives while managing consumer customer experience across all touchpoints on digital channels at XanPool LLC.
Zhang focuses on integrating customer feedback into product design with his deep understanding of product management for different consumer verticals including eCommerce sites & mobile applications among others. Bai has vast technical experience from software engineering & deeply understands UX/UI design principles which have helped build an amazing user interface on their decentralized network platform called ‘XanPool Protiles’. Yung handles business development as well as acquiring strategic partners from corporate/startup collaboration who can help share resources in order to drive growth forward faster than ever before at Forte LLC (parent company). Law helps lead data platform operations with AI applications that can enable more efficient customer acquisition services & predictive analytics along with real-time marketing functions such as A/B testing amongst many other capabilities when it comes to automation processes he helps oversee internally at Forte LLC (parent company).
The Investors
Hong Kong-based fintech company XanPool has raised $27M to fund its decentralized payment network. The funding round was led by venture capital firms S2 Capital and China Merchants Ventures, and other investors include Polychain Capital, Alpha JWC, Relativity Capital, FBlock Capital, and other notable angel investors.
The team behind XanPool is optimistic about the potential of the funding and is eager to use the capital to further develop the payment network.
Overview of Investors
Hong Kong-based fintech company, XanPool, recently raised US$27 million in series A venture capital funding. This round of fundraising was backed by a consortium of global investors and led by Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Horizons Ventures. Other investors who participated in the round were Matrix Partners China, Hillhouse Capital, Addor Capital, and AFB Investments.
Horizons Ventures is an international venture capital firm founded in 2001 and headquartered in Hong Kong. The company has invested in some of the world’s leading technology companies such as Tesla Motors, Spotify, and Waze.
Matrix Partners China is a well-known venture capital fund run by Dicker Li and Doug Desjardins. Founded in 2006, the fund consists of over 50 outstanding professionals across the globe based out of their Shanghai headquarters. Notable investments from this platform include TikTok’s parent company Bytedance as well as VIPKid.
Hillhouse Capital is one of Asia’s leading private equity firms established in 2005 with its headquarters located in Beijing, China. Primarily focused on early-stage investments in Asia’s most promising upstarts located mainly within Greater China Region, Vietnam, India and Japan markets; Hillhouse has been notably associated with Oyo Rooms (OYO), Pinduoduo (PDD) and GDS Holdings (GDS).
Addor Capital is a Singapore-headquartered VC firm focusing on Seed to Series B stage investments mainly across Southeast Asia spanning across multiple sectors ranging from Fintech to Retail Tech to FoodTech verticals; Notable investments from the VC firm include iKang Healthcare Group (KANG) , HelperKitchen , Gaodun Technology Group(GDNS).
AFB Investments is an early stage venture capital fund that specializes in backing tech companies either at seed or pre-series A stages mainly focused on emerging verticals such as Fintech & Digital Health & Education Space with notable names like Indian online healthcare platform Health Mall & Indonesia based web services marketplace Hollaport having benefited from AFB’s backings.
Reasons for Investing
XanPool, a Hong Kong-based fintech startup, recently received a total of $27 million in funding from leading investors including Yunfeng Capital and Sequoia India. Investors were drawn to the cutting-edge technology and innovative business model that XanPool has built to revolutionize the payment industry.
The investors saw great potential in XanPool’s decentralized payment network and its ability to remove middlemen, lower costs, eliminate fraud risk, and enable higher efficiency in cross-border payments. The startup’s approach is to use distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and other technologies to securely link buyer, seller and financial institution network nodes. This will ultimately reduce the complexity of payments without compromising security or data privacy.
XanPool also offers automated solutions such as cross-border payment services for smoother operations & lesser manual intervention. These features have attracted many big investors due to their potential for massive cost savings across various sectors such as banking, government, enterprise entities & venture capital firms.
Moreover, due to its groundbreaking innovations within this space, many investors reckoned that XanPool could corner a sizable market share in the payments industry. With their continued support & commitment from sources like Yunfeng Capital & Sequoia India — together with investment partners including Beyond Ventures Ventures — XanPool is positioned for longterm success and growth within this competitive sector.
The Impact
Led by a team of experienced fintech professionals, Hong Kong-based fintech XanPool recently raised $27M for its decentralized payment network. This is a milestone not only for XanPool, but also for the fintech industry as a whole.
Through their innovative approach to payments, XanPool is demonstrating the potential economic impact of decentralized technology and is paving the way for more fintech breakthroughs in the future.
Impact of Investment
The investment injection of $27M from investors including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Square Peg and Vectr Ventures marks a major milestone in fintech innovation for Hong Kong-based XanPool. Led by CEO and Co-founder Prasanna Loharbir, the team is driven towards realizing its vision of providing an open financial system using blockchain technology.
This recent funding will support the company’s decentralized payment network that enables an individual or business to accept payments from any source without needing to be part of any big organization. The technology enables international payments with smart contracts that increase the speed and reduces cost of cross-border transactions.
In addition to this new product, XanPool also offers solutions such as digital asset management and global remittances at competitive prices. The company has forged strategic partnerships with banks and retailers in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America to provide innovative financial services to consumers on a global scale.
This investment announcement reinforces the sector’s potential for rapid growth as more people turn towards digital banking solutions in times of crisis triggered by COVID-19 pandemic. It is expected that refined infrastructure developed as a result of this investment could create further opportunities for liberalizing access to financial mobility solutions worldwide.
Impact on Hong Kong Fintech Ecosystem
The successful funding of Hong Kong-based fintech startup XanPool’s $27 million round has sparked a positive momentum in the Hong Kong Fintech ecosystem. The strong interest in the round is stoked by the worldwide scaling potential of XanPool’s decentralized payment network, which provides a secure way to send and receive money across different currencies, blockchain networks and payment systems.
The impact of this new funding is likely to be felt across the entire fintech industry and beyond as more financial institutions move away from traditional payment infrastructure towards distributed ledger technology (DLT). With this influx of capital and an ever-growing customer base, XanPool’s network could become a leading player within Hong Kong’s fintech sector in developing innovative and disruptive solutions.
Aside from providing an easier way for businesses to send payments abroad, the decentralized network is expected to encourage smaller startups and existing financial institutions to offer services on its platform, paving the way for further innovation in Singapore’s banking industry. In addition, the investment acts as a signal that venture capitalists are looking for investments that can potentially disrupt existing industry norms.
By unlocking liquidity with its cross-border that links into more than 500 financial institutions across 35 countries, XanPool’s progress thus far has been an inspiring success story for the whole fintech community within Hong Kong, giving many aspiring entrepreneurs hope of what they can achieve with dedication and innovative thought leadership. It remains to be seen how far this newcomer can push its limits but with such a bold vision driving it forward, it could well revolutionize payments forever.
