Azteco, a Santa Monica, CA-based provider of vouchers for small amounts of bitcoin for everyday use, raised $6M in Seed funding.
The round was led by Jack Dorsey, with participation from Lightning Ventures, Hivemind Ventures, Ride Wave Ventures, Aleka Capital, Visary Capital, Gaingels, David Van Der Weele and Sunil Rajaraman.
The company intends to use the funds for product development and market expansion in Latin America and Europe.
Launched in 2014 and led by Paul Ferguson, Azteco is a provider of a voucher system that allows consumers to save, spend, and send small amounts of bitcoin, leveraging a global network built on trust and local connections. The solution was founded on the discover that more than 2 billion people worldwide have a smartphone but lack access to traditional financial services. For these people, bitcoin presents a low-cost, secure, and flexible alternative to traditional banking that removes payer fraud and allows the unbanked population to store value, make purchases, and access credit without a traditional bank account.
Users can purchase Azteco Vouchers identical to the familiar paper vouchers sold by mobile phone networks. They are redeemable directly to the mobile phones of consumers, working the same way that top-up vouchers do to add call time to Pay-as-You-Go mobile phones.
The company also has an office in Cape Town, South Africa.
FinSMEs
18/05/2023