A new crop of fintech startups are tackling blockchain-inspired problems without the blockchain
... I spotted three companies in this batch that use traditional finance tools to tackle blockchain-adjacent problems — all focused on markets outside the U.S.
The most promising of the batch is the Bengaluru-based Cheq, which is one of the first startups to build on India’s unified payments interface (UPI). India is currently making a push to expand UPI internationally, which creates a major opportunity for projects like Cheq. The company plans to become the main entry point for UPI users who don’t have an Indian national ID, a potentially enormous market if the platform keeps growing. There’s a lot more bureaucracy involved in building for UPI (in Cheq’s case, they’re getting their API keys from the government), but it also means a reliable client base. ...
“We have to acknowledge that fintech has always been very closely linked to the government,” he says. “Like it or not, our tax systems and legal jurisdictions operate according to these borders. So while the world was told that bitcoin was global, ultimately all the real money was stored within the borders of particular countries, and when those countries turned on bitcoin, the whole thing crashed.” ...
In Africa, a company called Capi Money is dealing with international invoicing — essentially smoothing the path for African businesses transacting with customers overseas. A neobank project called Coba is focused on transfers and currency exchanges between the U.S. and countries in Latin America, aimed at digital nomads who are spending pesos but otherwise keeping their money in dollars. In both cases, they’re going after the same problems as blockchain remittance services, but with more focus and less ideological baggage. ...
“Every cross-border company is trying to give you a seamless, low-cost, trustworthy payment system,” Shekhar told me. “The way bitcoin does it is saying, ‘People are not trustworthy, we will trust abstract technology.’ The way traditional governments do it is by saying, ‘I have these guns and I’m going to shoot the guy who tries to break the system.’ And that is good enough.”
See the full story here: https://restofworld.org/2023/exporter-crypto-y-combinator-blockchain-fintech/?mc_cid=671b60cb73&mc_eid=cf24d7da5b
