Stellar-powered payment platform coming to Asia

A blockchain startup from Thailand has raised 31 million dollars to boost a cross-border payment solution in South East Asia. Lightnet is based in Bangkok and uses the Stellar blockchain to build its service. According to Business Insider Lightnet needs to become a competitor for the traditional payment system SWIFT.

The first transactions need to go live in the first quarter of 2020. So far the primary platform for Lightnet has been completed, but more work needs to be done. The company wants to do 50 billion dollars of transaction volume by 2023. To achieve this growth Lightnet wants to integrate with existing services, like Moneygram.

Lightnet managed to get some major financial companies from the region on board, including Singaporean United Overseas Bank (UOB), Seven Bank from Japan and South Korea’s Hanwha Investment & Securities. The blockchain startup is focusing on the four billion people living in the Asia Pacific. Cheap cross-border payments, mobility and inclusivity for unbanked Asians are key elements of their service.

More interestingly is the fast that Seven Bank is also the company behind the 7-Eleven stores in Japan. In addition another investor own nine thousand Starbucks and 7-Eleven stores across Taiwan, China and the Philippines. This could be another way to push adoption.

Lightnet, a remittance provider company, is utilizing Velo Protocol to tackle an underbanked banking market worth $380bn market where it’s already starting off with a low-cost and convenient remittance payment solution for with 10m immigrant workers in South East Asia worth of $150bn.

Lightnet.io (11/1/2020)

XLM in recent months

Stellar has been having some difficult times in recent months. The XLM token has been dropping in value since early November. This drop in value happened against the dollar and against bitcoin, making the token quite a bad investment in recent times. However, Stellar has been around for five years now and developers are still building the blockchain and adding functionalities.

The foundation behind Stellar burned 55 billion XLM, leaving 50 billion XLM on the market. The company is now focusing on development, support of the ecosystem, investments for use-cases and acquiring users. Fintech companies like Lightnet and Interstellar are among the first to utilize the Stellar blockchain.