SnapCard, a US Silicon Valley blockchain company, receives strategic investment from Jiufu

Recently, SnapCard, a blockchain financial technology company in Silicon Valley, USA, received strategic investment from the domestic mobile financial technology service group "Jiufu". This strategic investment targets Fintech companies for strategic layout. Jiufu and SnapCard jointly develop blockchain technology in Silicon Valley and actively introduce it to China, strengthen scientific and technological research and development, and jointly develop the market.

As the birthplace of financial technology, Silicon Valley in the United States has many startups being pursued by the capital market, especially in the hot blockchain field. McKinsey's research shows that blockchain technology is the core technology with the greatest potential to trigger the fifth wave of disruptive revolution after steam engines, electricity, information and Internet technology. SnapCard was founded in 2013 and is a company that conducts cross-border payment and remittance based on blockchain technology and Bitcoin. Its product MassPay has been deployed in multiple regions such as China, the United States, Australia, Brazil, and Canada, and will also launch services in multiple countries such as the euro zone this year.

The high cross-border remittance rates and low efficiency have become the pain points of cross-border trade and other capital flows. At present, when domestic merchants conduct overseas sales, the first choice of payment platforms is still PayPal. On the one hand, these platforms have problems such as high fees and slow capital turnover. For example, the net profit of the general retail industry is less than 10%, and the payment rate consumes nearly 3% of the profit space; on the other hand, due to policy reasons, there are concerns about the security of existing third-party overseas payment platforms.

"The current international remittance system SWIFT was established in the 1970s. It is outdated and inefficient. Through blockchain technology and Bitcoin, we can complete international payments efficiently and at low cost," said Michael Dunworth, founder of SnapCard.

SnapCard uses Bitcoin for transactions. In 2014, it launched a service for paying taxes with Bitcoin. It uses blockchain technology to match currency dealers with the most favorable exchange rates. Users can exchange payment currencies into an equivalent amount of Bitcoin, and then exchange Bitcoin for the required currency. The current system usually takes about a week to complete the payment, but SnapCard can achieve the same-day arrival. With the advantages of blockchain technology innovation, SnapCard has changed the disadvantages of traditional financial services, eliminated the transaction process between intermediary banks, and made cross-border payment transfers faster, with lower transaction costs and easier operation, which has won the favor of users.

SnapCard and Jiufu met at the "Fire Eye 2016 Jiufu China-US Financial Technology Entrepreneurship Competition", when the team won the championship. In addition to Jiufu, Matrix Partners China Partner Wan Haoji and China Renaissance Managing Director Zhou Xiang also praised SnapCard.

According to third-party data, the global cross-border remittance market is worth more than US$500 billion. The market space that SnapCard focuses on is huge. The entry of Chinese capital represented by Jiufu is a powerful combination of huge potential market and advanced technology, which is expected to bring about disruptive changes.

"We have been paying attention to the field of financial technology, especially blockchain and big data," said Lin Yanjun, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Jiufu Group. "We are very optimistic about SnapCard's technological attempts. Their entrepreneurial team is also very dynamic and can complement Jiufu's internationalization strategy."