Points, a credit-scoring blockchain company, announced US$8 million Friday in seed-funding and a partnership with one of China’s largest credit agencies and another agency backed by China’s trade ministry.
The Singapore-headquartered company aims to use the funding to expand its technical team currently based in three locations Singapore, Beijing and Silicon Valley, a company spokesperson said. Among the backers of this seed round are DHVC, Cherubic Ventures, Ce Yuan, Ontology Foundation, Nest.Bio Ventures and China Chengxin.
Points said it agreed on a data-sharing partnership with China Chengxin Credit, one of China’s largest credit rating agencies and Teleinfo, a credit rating agency owned by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The partnerships will give Points access to a billion identity profiles and 500 million credit profiles in China, the startup said.
Founded in 2017 by Sarah Zhang and Kate Shen, Points, or PTS, aims to make credit accessible to the world’s unbanked population through its blockchain protocol and artificial intelligence technology that allow for better and more accurate credit scoring.
“Our vision is to serve the underrepresented community, and with blockchain as a core technology for Points, we’re able to incentivize partners to participate in risk-free data sharing, which combined with AI, means truly accurate credit scores,” said Zhang.
According to a company’s spokesperson, what sets Points apart from other blockchain protocols and solutions out there is that it is market-ready, and it was one of the main reasons why Points was able to clinch the pilot with Teleinfo.
The blockchain company also recently announced a strategic partnership with Ontology, one of its seed-funders. The partnership will see Points build upon Ontology’s high-performance blockchain technology with Ontology gaining access to the credit-service industry.
Global appetite for blockchain companies remains on the rise. Venture investment worldwide into blockchain and blockchain-related companies hit US$1.3 billion in the first half of 2018, surpassing the total for the whole of last year, according to data from Crunchbase. A US$1.6 billion Chinese blockchain fund was launched in early April this year in Hangzhou, China.
Editors: Ben Jiang, Nadine Freischlad
