Xalts Acquires Contour Network To Drive Digital Trade Finance
Singapore, Feb 20 (IANS) – Xalts, a fintech company backed by Accel and Citi Ventures, has announced the acquisition of Contour Network to accelerate digitization in trade and supply chain finance. Contour, established in 2017 by a consortium of global banks, aims to digitize trade and currently serves over 22 banks and more than 100 global businesses.
Xalts, which enables institutions to build multi-party applications for digitization and tokenization, plans to leverage Contour’s industry standard workflows and integrations to facilitate communication and transactions between businesses and financial institutions in the network. This move comes as global trade reaches over $30 trillion but less than 1% is conducted digitally, according to QED Investors.
Xalts aims to create a ‘Plaid for Trade’ by expanding the scope of Contour’s network, allowing businesses to access digital solutions for trade and supply chain finance offered by banks, fintechs and technology partners. The initial focus will be on embedded solutions for trade and supply chain finance, enabling banks, logistics companies and technology companies to offer integrated solutions to businesses using a single platform.
The company was founded in 2022 by Ashutosh Goel and Supreet Kaur, former senior executives at HSBC and Meta. Xalts currently has a team of over 50 across offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, the UAE and the UK, and counts large financial institutions, regulatory bodies and technology companies as its clients.
Reflecting on the acquisition, Abhinav Chaturvedi, Partner at Accel, said, “Xalts has demonstrated that they have the right vision and a team that can execute at a global scale very quickly”. While Everett Leonidas, Director at Citi Ventures, stated, “The combination of these two companies into one firm with an expanded vision and a great leadership team will accelerate innovation in global trade finance”.
The acquisition of Contour Network by Xalts marks a significant step forward in the digitization of trade and supply chain finance, as the industry aims to streamline communication and transactions between businesses and financial institutions.
–IANS
