Stellar expands reach in Latin America with $3M investment in Settle Network

The Stellar Development Foundation has invested Settle Network, the largest digital assets settlement network in the Latin American region.

It marks the fourth investment this year from the SDF enterprise fund, bringing the total to more than $9.2 million in 2020. The fund is a venture-style trust for growing the Stellar network and developing partnerships for cross-border payments. It has previously invested in Abra and SatoshiPay.

The investment of around $3 million will be paid in lumens (XLM) and help bolster Settle’s current suite of payment tools which include fiat to crypto onramps, payment processing, and merchant gateways. The platform was built using the Stellar network so it is a good fit for investment.

The network also offers a suite of products called Settle X that enables compliant interoperability between local currencies and digital assets. Included in that is a platform called Stable X enabling the trading and swapping of stablecoins, which have surged in demand and supply in 2020.

The Argentinian based Settle Network was established in 2018 and has a strong foothold in Latin America due to its fiat-to-crypto capabilities. Stable X targets markets in Argentina and Brazil with an Argentine peso stablecoin called ARST and a Brazilian real based BRLT. These can be used to hedge against inflation with its USDX dollar pegged stablecoin.

CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, Denelle Dixon, said that;

“The Settle Network is delivering on the vision and mission of Stellar, putting blockchain technology and access to finance into the hands of people that need it,”

Pablo Orlando, CEO of Settle Network, said there is no better partner for the firm than the SDF, which matches their core values:

“When we started Settle, we chose to build on Stellar because its technology is designed for global interoperability and that has enabled us to create a thriving stablecoin business in LATAM and expand our product offering to launch the world’s first stablecoin exchange and stablecoin gateway, StableX,”

Earlier this month, a Euro stablecoin was launched on Stellar by one of Europe’s oldest banks, Germany’s Bankhaus von der Heydt, (BVDH).

Stellar’s native cross-border token, XLM, has surged over the past 24 hours adding almost 16% to close in on $0.20. The eleventh largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization hit a 2020, and two year high, of $0.223 on November 25 following a protocol upgrade.