Streami, a start-up developing a blockchain-based solution for remittances, announced it has attracted $2 million in seed funding. In that it was backed by one of the leading Korean banks.

Streami’s ambition is to help people from South Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and China to detour illicit money transfer services in the Asian remittance market.

Despite being a newcomer, Streami has already gained support from one of South Korea’s largest financial services providers – Shinhan Bank, which for the most part backed its funding round giving ₩500m (about $427,000). Among Streami’s other investors are an IT organisation Shinhan Data Systems, a payments firm ICB, a venture firm Bluepoint Partners as well as a number of angel investors.  

Streami’s CEO and founder Junhaeng Lee has told CoinDesk: “Streami's main competitors, as of now, are traditional remittance service providers in general and illegal money transmitters that are estimated to take up significant Korea-outbound remittances market share.” According to Lee, the funding will be invested into opening the company’s branches in other Korean cities and recruiting new talented personnel.

As Finance Magnates states, this funding turns out to be only the third for the cryptocurrency industry over the past month, which confirms that industry venture investment has been in decline since the first quarter of 2015. The source explains that investors are more prone to finance the development of blockchain’s technology while bitcoin projects are losing their attractiveness

Anna Lavinskaya