MicroMoney has another influential fund in its corner. Alex Mashinsky’s Governing Dynamics, a U.S.-Israeli venture fund investing into Israeli biotech startups, AI, cybersecurity and energy to scale up in the U.S., has taken MicroMoney in as a strategic partner, instrumental to increasing the impact and the heft of its portfolio companies’ operations.
Mr. Mashinsky’s track record in finding perfect matches for tech opportunities is impressive. Just recently, he was the lead of the group that won NYC’s MTA (subway operator) open bid to provide Wi-Fi underground. The project, called Transit Wireless, has a 25-year franchise and will add Wi-Fi to 300 stations. Mr. Mashinsky’s biggest project to date was launching and developing Arbinet, one of the largest telco exchanges in the world. With 2,500 phone companies as members and 20 billion transactions a year, the company merged with Primus Communications in 2011, generating a whopping $1.5 billion in annual revenues, only to sell its assets in 2012 and distribute $800 million to shareholders.
Mr. Mashinsky sees MicroMoney as a strategic player, fitting to join Governing Dynamics’ universe. The first portfolio partnership Mr. Mashinsky engineered is with decentralized credit lending platform Celsius Network.
Founded in 2015, MicroMoney has embarked o a mission to provide access to the unbanked audience for banks, trade, and financial organizations. It is a fast-growing company valued at $1.85 million (before the token distribution campaign), with over 85 employees in six international locations.
MicroMoney makes lending decisions using a proprietary, A.I. algorithms, machine learning, and Big Data based mobile scoring system. Its lending process doesn’t require any collateral or paper-based documentation. The company collects customers’ opt-in mobile phone data to establish potential borrowers’ credit score. After that, it uses the score to generate credit profiles, stored with MicroMoney Blockchain Credit Bureau, which in turn shares this data with financial institutions worldwide.