Blockchain Stellar Development Foundation invests in Egyptian Founded Tribal Credit

Blockchain Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced a $3 million USD Enterprise Fund investment in Tribal Credit, a US-based fintech platform providing financial services for digital-first SMEs in emerging markets founded by Egyptian entrepeneurs. Tribal Credit first raised 5.5 million USD through an investment round led by UAE  BECO Capital and Global Ventures. 

The investment will allow Tribal Credit to advance development of its blockchain products built on Stellar, bringing banking solutions and cross-border payments to businesses in Latin America and other emerging markets, as well as leverage the most powerful features of the Stellar network to make payments even faster and more cost-effective.

 

“Our entire mission is about empowering startups and SMEs in emerging markets with access to financial services,” said Amr Shady, Tribal Credit CEO. “Our focus starts in Mexico, a country that will benefit from global accessibility to banking services previously only available to large corporations. By tapping into Stellar’s existing and growing network of anchors, we will be able to leverage existing digital assets to bring our customers with fast, affordable cross-border payments, credit card balance settlement, and other innovative features of the Stellar blockchain that will benefit our global users.”

 

Tribal Credit recently raised a combined Series A and debt round of $34.3 million, led by QED investors and Partners for Growth (PFG). SDF’s participation in the investment round is targeted to facilitate Tribal’s integration onto the Stellar network as it executes its vision for blockchain-powered products and services. Tribal Credit uses a propriety AI driven approval process. 

 

“We see blockchain, and our integration with Stellar specifically, as a strategic next step for our business, offering us the ability to provide cheaper, faster payments for our customers,” said Mohamed Elkasstawi, Tribal Credit Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer who leads the blockchain vision, strategy, and execution. “Working with the Stellar ecosystem, we’ll be able to leverage the network to deliver on some of our most important use cases — like facilitating  cross-border payments between businesses in previously underserved markets. This is only one of many exciting blockchain projects we’re working on in partnership with SDF.”

 

With around 62 million SMEs in LATAM making business-to-business payments, Tribal Credit was created to help empower them with next generation payment products.

 

“Tribal Credit shares our vision for a world where access to financial services is a right, not a privilege,” said Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of SDF. “We’re excited to work alongside Tribal as they integrate onto the Stellar network and see the many ways they will  support startups and SMEs in emerging markets with the financial services they need, providing equitable access to the global financial system and at the same time, driving economic growth. As Tribal develops Stellar-powered products, we will not only expand the Stellar network, we will also establish another outstanding strategic partner to businesses and developers in the ecosystem to create meaningful new business opportunities.”

 

This is the fourth investment made in the 2021 fiscal year from SDF’s Enterprise Fund, a venture-style fund for growing the open-source Stellar network, bringing the fund’s total investments this year alone to $9.5 million, for a combined total of $18.765 million in investments since its launch in FY20.