Colendi acquires blockchain specialist SETL
Turkey-headquartered embedded fintech services platform Colendi has acquired London-based blockchain settlements and payments provider SETL.
The deal follows a $38 million Series A funding round last September that empowered Colendi to build from strength to strength and position the company as a major player in the corporate blockchain solutions market.
To that effect, Colendi made a move to buy SETL, which will now offer its services under the Colendi umbrella. SETL was launched in 2015 as an enterprise blockchain company that caters to Central Banks and Tier 1 Financial Institutions.
In December 2021, SETL and SWIFT announced an interoperability Proof of Concept and tested its 1m TPS blockchain to service a Regulated Liability Network (RLN) with AWS.
SETL and Colendi prepare RegFi/DeFi convergence
Anthony Culligan, Chief Engineer at SETL, commented: “This initiative links the work we do with enterprise blockchains to a robust and secure public blockchain environment. Many of our RegFi clients are looking for a route from internal private blockchains to a public shared environment. This will provide that path.”
Ian Hannam and Bulent Tekmen, Chairman of Colendi and Chief Executive Officer, respectively, commented on the announcement: “We are delighted to welcome SETL to the Colendi family and look forward to leveraging their formidable blockchain tech for the benefit of our users. We see a future where your financial interactions are embedded in your experience whether you are gaming, shopping, investing or saving.”
Sir David Walker, Cairman of SETL, added: “Colendi is exactly the right partner for us. Their phenomenal growth shows that they understand and embrace the changes that are sweeping financial services. We bring the right technology at the right time to create a global decentralised network which can execute our joint vision”.
Philippe Morel, Chief Executive Officer at SETL, stated: “We will of course keep our prominent role in RegFi, bringing Market Infra, Asset Management and Payments solutions to regulated Financial Institutions. RegFi still represents 99% of worldwide financial flows! But as a leading-edge financial technology firm, SETL could not ignore DeFi. With Colendi, we are preparing the RegFi/DeFi convergence. And we will offer to our RegFi clients the opportunity to connect in a secure manner to a public blockchain ecosystem”
The SETL/Colendi enterprise is pre-announcing a new public blockchain infrastructure that will be used to host native tokens and smart contracts for Colendi’s current 10+ million users.
The network is intended to bridge the gap between public and private blockchains by allowing regulated institutions to deploy nodes which can selectively participate in public transactions whilst maintaining their own permissioned ledger.
Colendi will leverage the architecture on a wide range of services, including investment, messaging, gaming, and many other dApps currently under development within the Colendi ecosystem. Soon, the firm will announce a native network token offering to support a 2023 launch.
The new decentralised network is expected to be EVM compatible, able to support cross-chain connectivity, and to natively support popular formats for NFT’s and other tokens.
