Dfns Raises $16 Million to Expand Crypto Wallet Infrastructure

Dfns has raised $16 million in a Series A funding round to expand adoption of its crypto wallet infrastructure for institutional clients.

The company’s efforts will focus on the expansion of banks, payment services, trading platforms, investment applications, tokenization projects, government and corporate repositories and fund managers, especially in the European Union, the United Kingdom , United Arab Emirates and the United States, Dfns said on a Tuesday (Jan. 14) press release.

“Our focus is to deliver world-class infrastructure for our FinTech clients,” CEO of Dfns Clarisse Hagège the release said. “They demand bank-grade security, smarter transaction management, direct integrations, and better user and developer experiences. This is what we do best, and this is what we will continue to deliver.”

Dfns shifted the focus of its wallet-as-a-service platform for crypto assets to institutional clients two years ago because these customers have a large share of the world’s liquidity and therefore can drive crypto adoption, according to the release.

To attract these customers, the company positions itself as “the most secure blockchain wallet infrastructure” and prioritizes bank-grade security, per release.

By 2024, Dfns will have more than 130 clients, support 10 million wallets, and secure and process $1 billion in monthly transactions, worldwide, the company said Tuesday update on its website.

“While economic, operational and regulatory challenges have led to some client turnover, Dfns has maintained an impressive 300% year-over-year growth through 2021,” the company said in the update. “This momentum is now driven by a new wave of FinTech innovators – spanning trading, banking, payments, lending, investing, asset management, treasury and more – who are focused on delivering real economic value and tangible utility.”

Dfns was founded in 2020 and raised $13.5 million in seed funding in April 2022.

In another recent development in this space, MasterCard, MetaMask and bank said in August that they are working together to launch a crypto-to-fiat card called the MetaMask Card that allows MetaMask purse customers use crypto for everyday fiat currency purchases wherever Mastercard is accepted.

In July, Visayan and Tangem AG launched a collaboration that resulted in a Visa payment card combined with a hardware purse which allows Tangem users to pay with their crypto or stablecoin balances at merchants that accept Visa.