Eight major banks, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and BNP, founded Contour Network, which an 18-month-old Singapore fintech company purchased. Deal terms were unknown; however, the purchase price was in the high single millions and included cash and shares.
Accel and Citi Ventures-backed Xalts help financial institutions create and maintain blockchain applications. A consortium of eight banks founded Contour in 2017 to automate commerce. 22 banks and over 100 multinational businesses utilize it, including Tata Group, Rio Tinto, and SAIC.
Ashutosh Goel and Supreet Kaur, former HSBC and Meta executives, created Xalts in 2022. Kaur tells Eltrys that they created Xalts because huge financial institutions and enterprises don’t have a single procedure for corporate loans, letters of credit, and bank guarantees. Different teams within and outside their corporations manage them. Different teams handle KYC, onboarding, risk, compliance, and issuance of commercial bank loans to firms.
Financial institutions generally engage their IT staff or external software service providers to design apps to improve efficiency, which may be expensive and time-consuming. Xalts lets enterprises develop and distribute applications internally and externally.
Contour will become a train linking banks, enterprises, and other institutions to Xalts’ platform, according to the firm. Kaur said this will let Xalts’ customers create applications and connect securely and compliantly. It will initially let banks and logistics providers give clients integrated trade and supply chain applications on a single platform.
Global commerce might reach $30 trillion by 2030, but merchants still face friction. Since importers, exporters, banks, logistics firms, and customs exchange information manually, transactions take a long time.
Kaur says Xalts’ largest growth area is helping banks connect with corporate clients and provide B2B finance products, including trade financing and loans. She cites a multinational quick fashion corporation with Vietnamese and Bangladeshi suppliers. By building integrated applications with Xalts, the conglomerate may enable suppliers to acquire finance with a one-click solution on its internal vendor portfolio, even if its bank isn’t in those nations.
Digital commerce platform Contour Network is acquired by Singaporean fintech Xalts.
