NAB Ventures, a venture capital fund owned by The National Australia Bank, has led a $24m investment round in San Francisco-based foreign exchange payments startup Veem.
The funding round was also participated by GV (formerly Googles Ventures), American VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Silicon Valley Bank and Japanese fund SBI Investment.
Veem said: “It’s a big step forward in our evolution and will help us to reach many more businesses and meet their growing needs for simplified, affordable global payments.”
Veem, which was formerly known as Align Commerce, offers a blockchain-based platform for cross-border business to business payments.
It plans to utilize the funds to further improve and integrate the platform experience and bring additional currencies into the offering.
NAB Ventures General Partner Melissa Widner said: “Technology in the global payments and foreign exchange space is evolving rapidly as customers identify new platforms to help them do business quickly and easily.”
The transaction is the third investment for NAB Ventures after a stake purchase in Sydney startup Data Republic and seed investment in health tech Medipass Solution.
In 2015, Veem raised $12.5m from Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley Bank and few other investors in Series A round of funding.
The startup said that the round of funding enabled it to level-up its offering, overhaul the experience, expand its country footprint and build out a global team.
Widner said: “We identified Veem as a market leader in both technology and business model. This investment forges a close relationship with the company that will provide insights into user expectations of where technology is heading for cross-border payments.”