Huma Finance is transforming payment financing by
utilizing real-world assets to deliver instant and borderless
liquidity, enabling faster, more accessible, and more efficient
financial solutions.
SAN
FRANCISCO, Sept. 12, 2024 /CNW/ -- Huma, the first
Payment Financing (PayFi) network, announced today that it has
raised $38 million in funding.
Distributed Global led the equity round, with significant
participation from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, the Stellar
Development Foundation, and TIBAS Ventures, CVC arm of İşbank, the
largest private bank in Turkiye. Part of this raise came as
investments into high-yield real world assets (RWA) assets on
platform.
The vast majority of businesses and people around the world
depend on a form of payment financing. Credit cards alone finance
$16T in merchant payments globally. Trade finance facilitates
$10 trillion in B2B payments. One in
every six families depends on remittances—money sent back home
across the borders—yet even that system depends on trillions of
dollars being locked in pre-funding accounts. The list goes on.
While the demand for payment financing increases daily, creating an
urgent need for more innovative solutions, traditional
financial institutions are unable—or unwilling—to meet this need,
widening the liquidity gap with each passing day. Payment
financing is so ingrained in every part of our lives that, without
it, the entire economy would stop growing.
PayFi aims to address this giant liquidity gap by bringing
trillions of dollars of real world payment volume over to
blockchains and stablecoins. Leveraging the core strengths of
blockchain—global money movement in seconds through programmable
money—PayFi also enables new real-world use-cases that were
previously impossible. Huma has built the first ever PayFi network
with all of these use cases in mind, adopting an open, modular and
decentralized approach to empower interoperable
solutions across participants. By bringing the best of RWA,
Payments, and DeFi together, Huma is creating a
network that is far more efficient and accessible than traditional
alternatives.
"While designing Huma, we often asked ourselves: How do you
build an open payment financing network on blockchain that is more
powerful than Visa? Today, stablecoins are already powering $2T in
payments annually. An open payment financing network is going to
help grow the entire payment ecosystem faster." said Huma
co-founder Richard Liu. "The surge
of interest we're seeing right now is a testament to PayFi's
potential. As more partners join us every week, it's clear that
PayFi is quickly becoming the new frontier of RWA."
Building on this vision, Huma's April merger with Arf, the
leading on-demand liquidity solution for global payments, brought
together the two of the most prominent PayFi players. Huma and Arf
have already surpassed $1.8 billion
in payment financing transactions and are on track to reach
$10 billion next year, making them
one of the fastest growing use cases for Circle's USDC.
Part of this raise came as investments into Arf's high-yield RWA
assets. The Stellar Development Foundation provided a $10 million investment. Additionally, tokenized
assets are currently available to accredited investors on Scroll
for a limited period. With this funding infusion, Huma plans to
further expand its PayFi network to the Stellar smart contract
platform and to Solana in the coming months, making
sure the network is accessible from all the major payments-focused
chains.
"Moving money quickly and cheaply across borders is at the core
of what the Stellar network does best. PayFi is providing real
world utility that solves problems for people and companies, and it
is the type of project tailor-made for the Stellar network. We look
forward to continuing to working with Huma to grow the PayFi
ecosystem," said Denelle Dixon, CEO
of the Stellar Development Foundation.
"Huma's PayFi network represents an important step forward in
payment financing, offering solutions to long-standing
inefficiencies in the industry," said Chao
Deng, CEO of HashKey Capital. "We believe innovations like
this are crucial for addressing real-world challenges, and we're
pleased to see Huma playing a key role in advancing the Web3
space." Huma's growing PayFi network has caught the attention
of leading blockchain advocates, further fueling the momentum
behind PayFi. The Solana Foundation's support signals
how PayFi's innovative on-chain financial solutions are set to
redefine global finance.
"PayFi is the creation of new financial markets around the time
value of money. On-chain finance can enable new financial
primitives, product experiences, and financial access that are
impossible in traditional or even Web2 finance. When I met the Huma
team, it was immediately apparent that they'd be a great anchor for
the PayFi ecosystem within Solana." said Lily Liu, President of Solana
Foundation.
Huma plans to launch the Huma Foundation this year, a pivotal
move to decentralize its PayFi network and broaden global access,
further solidifying its leadership in the RWA space. Additionally,
Huma is set to host the inaugural PayFi Summit in collaboration
with the Solana Foundation and Stellar Development
Foundation at Singapore Token 2049 on September 17th——an event
poised to ignite conversations and drive innovation in the
industry.
About Huma
Huma Finance is the first PayFi network. Huma powers financing
of global payments, with instant access to liquidity anywhere,
anytime. For more information about Huma and the PayFi network,
visit https://huma.finance/
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SOURCE Huma Finance