Borderless financial platform tech startup Gluwa onboards $500k for its newest OpenFi bond account fundraise round

It’s hard to believe that in 2022, close to one-third of adults – 1.7 billion – are still unbanked, according to a report from the World Bank. A majority of these people live in developing countries with little or no access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs. This problem is partly caused by a lack of mature financing infrastructure.

The good news is that some innovative FinTech startups are working on leveraging digital technologies and machine learning to provide financial inclusion by giving financial access to the unbanked and underbanked around the world.

At the forefront of this change is Gluwa, a borderless decentralized financial platform that connects mature capital markets to digital-first financial institutions in developing countries. The startup got its name from the first ocean-going ironclad, Gloire. Using blockchain technology, Gluwa is creating a new, reliable, and open alternative with information transparency. With OpenFi, Gluwa aims to connect crypto liquidity with real-world opportunities

Today, Gluwa announced it has successfully onboarded another $500,000 to its Gluwa Invest Bond Account. The funds will be deployed to finance real-world businesses and infrastructure in under-privileged locations that have a hard time accessing funding.

The $500,000 collected in sUSDC-G, a Gluwa-native wrapper over the USDC stablecoin, will finance the third loan tranche to JenFi, a financing company focusing on digital-native businesses and startups in Southeast Asia.

The sum was raised in just 24 hours from 23 investors, with an average contribution of $21,739. In return, investors obtain a 12% annualized yield for a three months lockup. Gluwa Invest has received over $1.8M since launch and boasts a default rate of 0%, thanks to a careful investment partner selection process. In addition to the base yield, investors also receive 5 CTC tokens for each $100 invested in this round, significantly boosting the yield.

The speed of the fundraiser proves that the demand for Gluwa Invest’s yield has yet to be fully tapped. In a depressed market environment, yield opportunities primarily derived from margin-long trading dwindle, making those anchored in the real world shine. Gluwa Invest uses crypto to source funds globally but is otherwise completely devoted to real-world economic opportunities. Gluwa Invest thus offers a much more stable yield compared to other DeFi protocols in the long-term, and a completely fixed yield in the short term.

The Bond Account program will continue to be expanded off this success, offering more products in an “à la carte” choice of various maturities and terms. One of the first new opportunities is expected to offer 15% APY for a 12-month maturity.

Founded a few years ago, Gluwa is a borderless financial platform based in San Francisco. Created to provide access to valued currency, credit, or investment opportunities that are free from national boundaries, the venture employs a global team distributed across the US, Canada, South Korea, and elsewhere. Gluwa offers a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet, exchange, and investment products. The platform boasts over 2 million users worldwide.

“Our Bond Account program keeps on growing and exhausting all available allocations almost immediately,” said Brendan O’Toole, Head of Product at Gluwa. “The market clearly has a lot of appetite for stable yield opportunities. The great thing about Gluwa is that it’s based on real-world enterprises, and doesn’t care about the ups and downs of the crypto market.”