Today, Velo Labs and Interstellar announced that the Interstellar team, based in San Francisco, CA, is integrating with Southeast Asia-based Velo Labs, under the leadership of Mike Kennedy and with the ongoing support of its partner organizations, Stellar Development Foundation and Lightnet Group.
The strategic partnership between Interstellar and Velo Labs, which began in January 2020, set out to revolutionize international payments. This latest move pushes the relationship closer, bringing the combined strengths and ecosystems of the two organizations — Interstellar team’s knowledge and expertise of the Stellar blockchain and Velo’s established partnerships across the Southeast Asia region — to help build a global settlement network that enables faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payments.
Over the course of the last year, with the support of the Interstellar team, Velo has accomplished significant milestones, including the issuance of Velo Tokens on the Stellar network, the listing of Velo Tokens on major exchanges (KuCoin, VCC, OKEx, MXC), the development of the Velo Protocol with core functions (Digital Credit Issuance System, the Digital Reserve System, and the Hermes Warp Protocol), and the completion of its first live transactions using its Federated Credit Exchange network in December 2020. Together in the year ahead as a unified organization, they’ve set out a roadmap to build market-leading solutions for individuals, businesses, financial institutions, and their customers. The company also aims to drive greater adoption of the Velo protocol and increase the number of transactions over the Stellar DEX and Velo FCX.
Mike Kennedy, the current CEO of Interstellar, will take the helm as CEO of Velo Labs. Kennedy was the former CEO and Founder of Zelle.
Mike Kennedy, CEO of Velo Labs, said: “Interstellar has been focused on revolutionizing international payments with the Stellar blockchain technology, specifically in Southeast Asia. Velo and Interstellar joining teams is a natural progression of that work and will accelerate our shared vision to drive implementation and adoption throughout the region. We’ve already accomplished so much together and I am proud to lead this team through the next phase of our growth.”
Chatchaval Jiaravanon, Chairman of Velo Labs: “This announcement is a pivotal point in our long relationship with Interstellar. It signifies the culmination of our core development phase and the commencement of our growth and evolution phase. Working together as one company will enable us to quickly expand Velo’s ecosystem and continue innovation on the protocol to meet our growing list of partners’ needs.”
Tridbodi “Beam” Arunanondchai, Vice Chairman of Lightnet, said: “As our work has progressed over the last year, the opportunity has become clear — we are in a strategic position to provide unprecedented innovation, especially for cross-border transactions, in Asia. To best tap into that opportunity, it is time to bring our combined strengths under one roof. With Mike’s proven leadership in payments and his team’s technical and strategic blockchain expertise at Velo, we can deliver solutions faster to our growing list of customers and partners.”
Jed McCaleb, Founder of Interstellar and the Stellar network, said: “This is a significant step for the Stellar ecosystem, with potential to drive more anchors to the network, creating new on/off ramps in Asia and business opportunities for both Velo and Stellar communities. It ultimately moves us closer to the future we want to see, where Stellar is connecting global financial infrastructure so that it’s faster, more affordable, and more accessible.”
