Australia’s second-largest bank Westpac has directed its venture capital fund, Reinventure Group, to invest in Coinbase, a San Fransisco-based Bitcoin startup.
It is believed that the aforementioned vertical has joined the Coinbase’s $75 million funding round, the same which received support from some of the biggest financial sharks, including New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Citigroup’s former CEO Vikram Pandit. In the latest Series C funding, Reinventure Group was joined by renowned venture capitalists like Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Andreessen Horowitz, Robbot Capital and Union Square Ventures.
The companies however shied away from mentioning the amounts that were invested in the Series C round.
Experimenting with Bitcoin
Reinventure Group now plans to interconnect Coinbase services with Westpac to derive out a feasible solution to conduct cheaper global transactions, confirmed one of its representatives. In his statement to Financial Review, the said representative further acknowledged Coinbase for being serious about implanting next-generation security technologies on its platform and said:
“Coinbase’s mission is to be the most trusted bitcoin company in the world and it is investing heavily in next generation security. Reinventure’s investment will provide key insights into the use of digital currencies and associated technologies.”
It is understandable that Westpac wants to harness Bitcoin, as well as its underlying technology, the blockchain, to meet the futuristic global payment transfer demands. As known to everyone, blockchain has emerged as one of the hottest topics among the financial technology backers and innovators, for it practically improves the ways with which world’s financial system operates.
At the same time, companies like Coinbase are fully powered by the blockchain technology that helps customers issues funds on the digital currency Bitcoin — comparatively quicker and cheaper than the entire banking infrastructures.
“One of Reinventure’s primary objectives is to create opportunities between its portfolio companies and Westpac, Reinventure’s largest investor and one of the top 15 largest banks in the world,” said the San Francisco firm in its blogpost. “We plan to work closely with Reinventure and share insights into the use of digital currencies globally.”
Earlier, Westpac has also agreed to experiment with the payment technology offered by Ripple Labs, a new-generating payment protocol company.
