Lightning Network startup Neutronpay announced recently that it raised a multi-million dollar seed round.
The Vancouver-based startup, with offices in Vietnam, secured its $2.25 million back in June. The round was led by Hivemind Ventures with additional funding coming from venture firms Republic, Cavalry, Ride Wave, Studio, Iterative, Fulgur Ventures, as well as individual investors.
The BC-born company says some of the funding has already been put to use, bolstering the startup’s headcount across various departments, with a focus on further development of enterprise APIs and a coming-soon mobile consumer app.
The Lightning Network is a payment protocol which sits atop Bitcoin and facilitates instantly settled payments—and for a combination of factors is the “ideal payment network of any type, period,” according to Neutronpay.
“Lightning has the potential to replace all debit, credit and wire transactions globally,” the startup believes. Because of its interoperability, “anyone with a Lightning enabled app could spend or send funds in local currency at any merchant or person worldwide.”
The company’s initial target market stems the founder’s roots in Vietnam. With a population approaching 700 million, South East Asia remains widely “underbanked,” with 50% being unbanked and thus “left out of the digital economy.”
“Being born and raised in Canada, I’ve been lucky enough to be part of first world financial infrastructure,” explains Albert Buu, who founded Neutronpay in 2018. “But I knew that going to Vietnam where my parents and rest of my family are from I could make a difference by introducing them to the Lightning Network and all that it could provide to the people of the country.”
“Albert and I believe the Lightning Network will be a payment rail which will be used in our everyday lives—whether you are buying groceries, sending funds abroad to a family member, or paying for movie tickets online,” stated Neutronpay COO Malcom Weed.
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