Alta raises $47.5 million for financial blockchain

Alta has raised $47.5 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures to develop blockchain infrastructure for banks and other financial institutions. The financing brings the company’s reported total funding to $80 million, including $32.5 million in seed funding. Alta announced the round on November 10, according to the company’s announcement date reported in the coverage.

The startup is building a blockchain with privacy and compliance controls intended to help institutions process financial transactions while protecting sensitive information. Alta says its system uses cryptography to verify that transactions meet required rules without making balances, customer identities and compliance policies public. The technology and its expected benefits remain under development; the company has not reported operating results.

Alta’s first planned product is intended to help businesses reduce the cash they hold in prefunded accounts for international payments. The company says the product would support just-in-time funding, foreign exchange and transfers into and out of yield-bearing tokenized assets. Alta estimates that about $4 trillion is held globally in such accounts, a figure...