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Valora, a mobile wallet built for the Celo network, has secured $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Celo said in a press release published on 27 July.
Other investors that participated in the $20 million funding round include Polychain Capital, SV Angel, Nima Capital, NFX, Valor Capital, and others. Valora also announced it will be separating from cLabs — where it began as an in-house project —and will now operate as an independent company. The former head of consumer growth of Celo, and now CEO of Valora, Jackie Bona, said in a statement:
“Valora is lowering the barrier to entry into crypto and DeFi. We believe in a world in which each individual has access to the wealth and opportunity created by this new global financial system, and Valora will strive to continue to provide greater access and build bridges to a better and more inclusive future.”
Released in February, Valora is a mobile peer-to-peer payments and remittance app that enables its 53,000 monthly active users to send funds across 100 countries using its Celo Dollar (cUSD) stablecoin. The newly acquired funds will help the company develop new products and create educational content aimed at making “more people comfortable using cryptocurrencies”.
The same day that Valora was released, Celo revealed it had secured $20 million in a funding round from investors such as a16z, Greenfield One, and Electric Capital. Created as a decentralized stablecoin project focused on payments, Celo has now reached a total fundraising of $65 million, and is also backed by companies such as PayU and Deutsche Telekom.