Thai Fintech startup Omise Raises $25M Via A Coin Offering

Omise, a fintech startup headquartered in Thailand, has raised $25 million in new financing via a coin offering.

According to a report in TechCrunch, the financing came via a so-called token sale, otherwise known as ICO. With the round of fundraising, the report noted, it is the most established technology company to raise money in that way.  An ICO is a initial coin offering in which the company trades future cryptocoins for cryptocurrencies that can be liquid immediately.  Omise had previously raised more than $20 million from venture capitalists and held the token sale to raise money  to create a payment platform dubbed Omise Go.  With Omise Go, the company will enable users to share funds via a network without the need for a bank account and without getting hit with fees or cross-border costs. The company also wants to sign on retail partners to extend the platform into purchases and to make it available to other payment companies as well, TechCrunch reported.

The report noted the Omise Go platform is still being developed and isn’t slated to launch until late 2018. The initial services and products will be available as of the fourth quarter of 2017, noted the report. When it is up and running it will be backed by OMG, the Omise Go cryptocurrency, which TechCrunch noted is based on ERC20 token standard and sold in the coin offering. OMG token holders get the opportunity to make money by helping operate the network, noted the report. Currently its main business is enabling digital payments over the Internet in Thailand, Japan and Indonesia. In the coin offering it sold  65.1 percent of the total float of OM. An additional five percent of the tokens were made available to anyone who owns Ethereum, noted the report.