Earlier this month Ukrainian startup Global Ledger announced a “strategic M&A partnership” with Swiss fintech Promethiem AG.
Founded in 2018 by Alex Fisun, Andrey Lazorenko and German Stogniiev, Global Legder is a blockchain forensic startup that allows banks, fintech companies and crypto startups to follow obligatory AML/CTF compliance rules for crypto assets. It “disrupts money laundering and cybercrime,” allowing banks to “freely work with cryptocurrencies.”
“Many countries have already implemented legislation that allows banks and financial institutions to operate with cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, banks must follow anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulations. To comply with them, they have to use the products that allow them to check where the cryptocurrency came from and assess the risk score of working with a particular client,” explains IdeaSoft (part of the Sigma Software Group), a Ukrainian IT service firm which incubated Global Ledger and helped it develop its solution.
“The main advantage of Global Ledger over the competitors is data privacy,” with all the data stored on the client’s side. This allows banks and financial institutions to stay GDPR compliant, notes IdeaSoft.
“We managed to create a product that solves those risks. It took us more than a year to build it due to the complexity of the product before getting our first clients. Since then we have worked with government agencies in several European countries, with banks in Switzerland, and attracted several large customers,” says Andrey Lazorenko, who co-founded both Global Ledger and IdeaSoft.
Global Ledger’s partnership with Promethiem Group will provide the Ukrainian startup with $3.5 million in funding as well as with a new channel to access the global market.
“This is the first and so far, the only case when a Ukrainian crypto ML product enters the world market,” said Lazorenko, who sees in this partnership the possibility for Global Ledger to open offices in Europe and expand cooperation with Swiss banks.
Public sources do not provide much information about Promethiem. On its website, the company describes itself vaguely as “a global investment and technology commercialisation firm,” which is “based in Switzerland, but with a global distribution network.”
