Circle receives $60 million in funding from Chinese investors including IDG, Baidu, and Wanxiang

Rage Review : Circle, a blockchain-based payment application company, received $60 million in Series D funding from Chinese investors and announced the establishment of its Chinese subsidiary, Circle China. The lead investor in this round of financing is Beijing-based IDG Capital, and new strategic partners in China include Baidu, CICC Jiazi Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd., China Everbright Investment Management Co., Ltd., Distributed Capital and CreditEase. Circle China also raised a separate seed round. The company's new financing will be used to develop global business, aiming to build a truly global payment network.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Blockchain-based payment application company Circle has raised $60 million in a new round of financing from Chinese investors; when the news was announced, the company was announcing the establishment of a subsidiary in China - Circle China.

The Series D round was led by Beijing-based IDG Capital, with participation from Breyer Capital, General Catalyst Partners, SilverLake co-founder Glenn Hutchins and former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano. Circle’s new strategic partners in China include Baidu, CICC Alpha, China EverBright Investments, Fenbushi Capital and CreditEase.

Circle co-founders Sean Neville and Jeremy Allaire told reporters that the Series D funding will be used for global business, and Circle China had already received funds through a separate seed round six months ago.

However, Neville and Allaire’s point in this passage is to emphasize that Circle is already well on its way to developing a truly global payments app, where users in the United States, Europe, and China will soon be able to exchange value via text messages.

Allaire said:

“We don’t see our focus as being about exchange or remittances, we don’t believe those categories exist. For us, that capital is flowing within global businesses and our focus is on investing in the consumer market.”

Allaire wants people to understand Circle as not another closed network like peer-to-peer payment platforms Venmo or Transferwise; it's just that market observers see similarities in their business models.

Therefore, Neville and Allaire assert that Cirlce’s core strength is not to provide customers with the best remittance service, but that the company’s mature application will cross borders and therefore be more user-friendly.

Fenbushi Capital was founded at the end of 2015 and is the first venture capital firm in China that focuses on investing in blockchain technology-related companies. Fenbushi Capital believes that blockchain technology will play a more important role in the future, bringing more transparency, higher efficiency and a safer environment to the global economy. Therefore, it will provide support to many blockchain-related start-ups and promote the development of blockchain economy and programmable finance. At present, it has laid out the entire blockchain industry chain and invested in more than 20 blockchain start-ups distributed around the world.

Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire will attend the Shanghai Blockchain International Week in September this year and will give a keynote speech titled "Decentralized Commercial Banking and Self-Finance" at the Blockchain Global Summit. He also personally expressed his strong desire to cooperate with relevant Chinese companies.