Blockchain digital cash platform Safe Cash receives $1.2 million in seed round financing

On September 30, Safe Cash Payment Technologies, a digital cash platform based on blockchain technology, has raised $1.2 million in its seed round.

The San Francisco-based company, which counts investors including InfoSpace founder Naveen Jain as one of its investors, said the platform is based on a "very disruptive idea."

The platform uses a Litecoin-compatible private blockchain and is expected to be launched early next year. Safe Cash CEO Chris Kitze said:

“Our platform, which is a permission-based blockchain, is licensed and controlled by the bank. We are a technology service provider to the bank, we do not handle any money. In addition, our money business and exchange business are licensed because of the relationship between the platform and the bank partner.”

Staking Tokens

According to Kitze, the digital token is 100% collateralized. “That means that for every $1 token that represents a dollar, the bank will have $1 in reserve.”

He continued:

“For licensed digital currencies, banks must create and operate them (digital tokens) for legitimate reasons. It is also possible to create tokens for private currency purposes, which we have been testing with a company in Iceland for the past six months.”

When asked how transactions of these tokens are processed, Kitze said that its process is similar to Bitcoin, where each party will have a secure wallet and the transaction will be recorded on the blockchain.

He also added that the confirmation time for this coin is so fast that the recipient can confirm it in less than 10秒and then resend the coins.

Reduce friction

Kitze believes there is consumer demand for such a product, pointing to inefficiencies in the U.S. banking system and excessive friction in small transactions.

Kitze claims that there is currently no simple and fast way to send small amounts of cash to different systems in less than 10 seconds.

He continued:

“That’s really our goal, to remove the friction and the pain of these types of transactions for consumers and merchants, and we think it will open up a lot of things that are not possible today.”

While Kitze declined to reveal the platform’s banking partners, adding that the company will reveal them later this year, he claimed the platform is currently focusing on mainstream banks.

Kitze sees Ripple and Hyperledger (the latter of which has been acquired by Blythe Masters' company) as Safe Cash's main competitors, but he also said Safe Cash is trying to go a step further.

“While these companies have done a great job getting the technology to where it is today, it’s time to move from the Pioneer stage to the Trailblazer stage,” he concluded.

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