(18 June 2021 – Global) Contour has closed its Series A+ funding with fresh support from Citi and SMBC on top of the seven inaugural Voltron Letter of Credit (LC) consortium members including BNP Paribas, Bangkok Bank, CTBC, HSBC, ING, SEB, and Standard Chartered.
Apart from the nine shareholder banks, a further ten banks have joined the network and a total of 13 are live on the platform following the transition to a production network in October 2020. R3, Bain and CryptoBLK have also been key stakeholders from inception.
Digitising the LC process is the consortium’s first stated key aim. Contour also confirmed it has an in-house team exploring other trade finance offerings and expects to double its team size in H2 2021. The group stated that it has processed LC transactions for multiple sector verticals including metals, energy, petrochemicals, textiles, soft commodities, and retail.
Commodities account for a large proportion of LCs, both digital and traditional. Another blockchain platform, komgo, is targeting LCs for the energy sector with plans to expand into other commodities. It announced it raised US$29 million in its third round of funding earlier this month.
“BNP Paribas endorses and promotes solutions for a simplified, automated and digital treatment of LC’s, and of trade in general. A wide market acceptance of a platform like Contour should ultimately benefit all players in the trade ecosystem by taking away the pain points the market has struggled with for a long time” stated BNP Paribas Global Head, Trade Solutions, Jean-François Denis.