Ali Erhat Nalbant

The VQF-regulated global settlement banking platform using Web3 technologies has raised $13m in a seed round with the participation of industry leaders including Circle Ventures, Hard Yaka, United Overseas Bank Venture Management, Signum Capital, and Stellar Development Foundation.

Arf has raised $13 million in equity and debt financing in a seed round from notable investors across Web3 and institutional finance space, including the investors of Coinbase, Solana, FTX, and Kabbage.

Circle Ventures joined the round alongside the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), United Overseas Bank (UOB) Venture Management, Signum Capital, Hard Yaka, NGC Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, and 500 Emerging Europe.

The firm intends to use the cash injection to further develop its blockchain-based technology to provide global treasury management and working capital credit lines for financial institutions and licensed money service businesses alike operating in the cross-border payments industry.

“We are delighted to see prominent Web3 and institutional finance investors validate our vision and join forces with us,” said CEO Ali Erhat Nalbant.

“Arf’s technology sits right at the center of cross-border payments evolution. This funding round will help us scale Arf to free up trillion dollars worth of locked working capital in the industry,” he added. “We’ll keep leveraging digital assets and Web3 technologies to fuel the transformation in global finance in a fully compliant way.”

With the seed funding, the firm will develop and foster new paradigm-shifting technologies in cross-border payments by combining the best of what Web3 and traditional finance has to offer.

Arf recently received the approval of the Financial Services Standard Association (VQF). The firm opened a new office in Zug and started scaling its team.

Arf also announced the launch of Arf Credit Line in April, which provides money service businesses instant access to transactional working capital credit lines, and allows any corridor to be post-funded in real-time.

Arf, the first compliant cross-border payment network running on stablecoins, announced the upcoming launch of its innovative product, Arf Credit. Arf Credit will provide an instant working capital credit line for MSBs worldwide.

Traditionally, when a money service business (MSB) wants to send money from one country to another, it has to prefund the same amount in the receiving country, bringing about tied capital, high opportunity cost, and operational inefficiencies. What’s more, since cross-border transactions are often considered risky, access to credit has always been a major problem for MSBs.

Designed to empower licensed MSBs all over the world, the soon-to-be-launched Arf Credit emerged as an idea when Arf co-founders noticed that most MSBs had issues with high prefunding requirements and limited access to working capital.

Co-Founder Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz says MSBs have been underserved players of the finance industry, especially in accessing working capital. “Of course, the industry must manage risks—but it also has to find innovative ways to enable the growth of cross-border transactions,” he underlines.

“The real problem with the current cross-border payments industry is that when you’re successful as an MSB, you need more money to run it,” says Co-Founder and CEO Ali Erhat Nalbant. “We developed Arf Credit as an API-based, transactional short-term working capital in USDC so that MSBs can use stablecoins without prefunding.”

Although options existed, most lenders only served customers with long-term credit needs or single payout corridors. Application processes were lengthy, and once the credit was given, it had to be repaid regardless of whether it was used.

Co-Founder Berhan Kongel says that licensed MSBs can instantly get the credit with a 2-7 day repayment period. “Each eligible MSB is assigned a certain amount of credit based on its transactional volumes within the Arf Network. They only pay interest for the credit amount used, and can automate repayments,” he explains.

“We are really excited to be a key player in enabling the cross-border payments industry to compliantly benefit from the blockchain and digital assets,” Ali Erhat Nalbant says. “It was a much needed improvement in global payments.”

Tag: Ali Erhat Nalbant

Arf raises $13m from investors including Circle Ventures, Hard Yaka, and SDF

Arf launches transactional stablecoin-based working capital credit line for MSBs worldwide

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