SDF Invests $550K In SatoshiPay For B2B X-Border Solution

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has made a $550,000 strategic investment to go toward SatoshiPay‘s development of a B2B cross-border payments solution and its digital wallets, according to a press release.

SDF’s investment came by way of convertible loan notes and was the third investment the foundation has made in SatoshiPay. The convertible loan notes will likely convert at the time of SatoshiPay’s next funding round, the release states.

London-based SatoshiPay is currently testing its solution and will likely have a public beta launch in the fourth quarter this year, the company said in the release.

The solution will particularly focus on the commercial payments market, which the press release states generates 170 billion euros ($188.3 billion) in annual transaction fees.

Meinhard Benn, SatoshiPay CEO, said the new developments came from the increasing demand for B2B solutions.

“With a surge in demand for instant B2B payments, and blockchain maturing and enabling a payments revolution, we believe we have a head start through our proven, scalable blockchain business model,” he said, according to the release. “Our growth over the years wouldn’t have been possible without SDF, who has been an essential partner to us in the development of our technology which continues today with this investment.”

SatoshiPay was among the first businesses to use Stellar’s ledger network commercially, and it has processed 650,000 euros ($720,000) in payments from over 200,000 accounts. Solar, the open-source wallet SatoshiPay made for the Stellar network, has racked up over 25,000 downloads in 40 countries.

Benn told PYMNTS in an interview in December that there was a ripe market to use blockchain to boost global payments infrastructures. He said blockchain being “built on top of the internet” made it borderless by design. By using it to work with payments, Benn said problems with speed and transparency that hinder traditional localized payment structures could be circumvented.

So, SatoshiPay is working on technology to use companies’ blockchain-to-bank links to move payments along, and to establish pipelines for stable tokens pegged to fiat currency to get funds into the traditional financial market almost instantly, Benn said.

He added that blockchain can also help facilitate faster transactions, which in turn can make businesses all the more efficient.