In a role reversal, Singaporean fintech startup Xalts, founded 18 months ago, has acquired Contour Network, a digital trading platform founded by eight major banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered and BNP. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the purchase price was in the low millions of dollars, consisting of cash and stock.
Backed by Accel and Citi Ventures, Xalts enables financial institutions to build and manage blockchain-based apps. Contour was launched in 2017 by a consortium of eight banks to digitize trade and is currently used by 22 banks and over 100 global companies including Tata Group, Rio Tinto and SAIC.
Xalts was founded in 2022 by Ashutosh Goel and Supreet Kaur, who previously held senior executive positions at HSBC and Meta, respectively. Kaur told TechCrunch that Xalts He said he had launched. Instead, it is handled by different teams within and outside the organization. For example, when a commercial bank issues a loan to a company, different teams work on his KYC, onboarding, risk, compliance, and issuance.
When a financial institution decides to build an application to make its processes more efficient, it typically turns to its IT team or an external software service provider, which can be expensive and take months. there is. Xalts' goal is to enable businesses to build their own apps and share them both within and outside of their organizations.
Supreet Kaur and Ashutosh Goel, founders of Xalts
The startup plans to turn Contour into a rail connecting banks, businesses, and other institutions and integrate it with Xalts' platform. This will allow Xalts' clients to not only build apps, but also connect to each other in a secure and compliant way, Kaur said. Initially, it will focus on enabling banks and logistics companies to offer built-in trade and supply chain apps to their customers on a single platform.
Global trade is expected to reach $30 trillion by 2030, but traders still have to deal with many frictions. Transactions take a lot of time, as all involved parties, including importers, exporters, banks, logistics companies, and customs authorities, exchange information in a largely manual process.
Kaul said Xalts' biggest growth area is enabling banks to better connect with corporate customers and offer B2B financial solutions, including trade finance and lending. She cites as an example the global Fast Her fashion conglomerate, which has vendors in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Even if a conglomerate's bank is not present in those countries, building an integrated app with Xalts allows vendors to access financing through a one-click solution for their in-house vendor portfolio.