{"id":805279,"date":"2025-01-03T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=805279"},"modified":"2025-01-03T13:52:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T11:52:19","slug":"the-south-africans-behind-a-r14-billion-fintech-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/805279\/the-south-africans-behind-a-r14-billion-fintech-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"The South Africans behind a R14 billion fintech startup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BVNK, founded by a group of South Africans, has developed a platform to fuel the next era of stablecoin payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has raised $50 million (R940 million) to support its growth, at a valuation of around $750 million (R14 billion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BVNK was founded in 2021 by three South Africans – Jesse Hemson-Struthers, Donald Jackson, and Chris Harmse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform offers banking services and payments for crypto-native businesses. Companies using BVNK can accept payments in fiat and cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through BVNK, companies can hold hundreds of different currencies and crypto assets and send funds worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, the cryptocurrency startup closed a $40 million Series A funding round at a $340 million post-money valuation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger Global, the venture capital firm behind Takealot and which invested in Bidorbuy and Private Property, left the funding round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other investors included The Raba Partnership, Avenir, Kingsway Capital, Nordstar, Concentric, and Base Capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent funding round doubled the company’s value and introduced further investors in the crypto startup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These investors include Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures, DRW VC, and existing investors Avenir and Tiger Global Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemson-Struthers, BVNK’s chief executive, said the company’s ambition has always been to accelerate global money movement with stablecoins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been building infrastructure that makes it easy for businesses to send, receive, exchange, and store stablecoins and fiat funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their infrastructure is technology agnostics and enables the movement of funds across fiat payment rails and blockchains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that stablecoins represent a path to efficiency, product innovation and new revenue for payment companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, companies face a challenge as payments at scale don\u2019t come naturally with blockchain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver the last 5 years, we\u2019ve built our own stablecoin infrastructure at BVNK to solve the problems we faced as we scaled to over $8bn in annualised volumes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BVNK infrastructure includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n