Today Nigeria’s Zone announced it raised $8.5 million in funding led by Flourish Ventures and TLcom Capital and including Digital Currency Group (DCG) as a backer. The company has a regulated ‘Layer 1’ blockchain, which supports blockchain-based payments, particularly for incumbent organizations such as banks and payment providers. While the term Layer 1 makes it sound like a permissionless blockchain, it’s currently closer to being a financial market infrastructure.
It has a central bank license and relationships with more than 15 banks and fintechs, although they’re not all onboarded yet.
The company was previously known as AppZone, which is now an umbrella brand that covers another business, Qore, a banking-as-a-service solution provider. The Qore arm has hundreds of clients.
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