French bitcoin startup Paymium has been able to raise €1 million in seed funding, which garnered contributions from French venture capital firms Newfund and Kima Ventures. It also drew financial support from Galitt, a payments consultancy and services firm, and a few angel investors.
Paymium acts as a bitcoin exchange for buyers and sellers of the cryptocurrency. It also has services for facilitating merchant acceptance for bitcoin payments.
Bitcoin Startup Expansion
The new funds will go to the expansion of the company in Europe, as well as research and development efforts. Paymium is also looking into blockchain technology, which has been gaining traction among financial companies and established firms in the developed world.
Blockchain refers to the distributed public ledger of bitcoin transactions, which are updated by a network of computers solving complex algorithms in a process known as bitcoin mining. Many institutions and even governments have already tapped into this technology for record-keeping and trade settlement.
The company has also been teaming up with other firms in the cryptocurrency and payments industries in order to enhance its services. Last year, Paymium worked with Showroomprive, which used to be the largest merchant in Europe. It has also worked with Ingenico, a point of sale (POS) and payment solutions provider, to support bitcoin payments.
The bitcoin startup clarifies that euro payment accounts are held by an approved Payment Institution for the time being. Each customer account is linked to a payment account held for you by a licensed Payment Institution partner, which means that the clients send euros through their own account to purchase bitcoins. Similarly, withdrawal requests are processed through the Payment Institution partners.
In addition, no bitcoins are stored on customer-facing servers, as private keys are held in bank vaults located in several cities. The bitcoin startup employs splitting techniques to ensure that no bitcoin can be stolen even if a bank vault is compromised.