Colu, a blockchain startup based in Tel Aviv, has raised $9.6 million in a Series A financing round, drawing support from Aleph, Spark Capital, Digital Currency Group and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer. The round follows a $2.5m seed round last year.

According to CoinDesk, the funding round comes as Colu is shifting its focus increasingly on the issuance of local currencies. Earlier, the startup focused on developing colored coins technology.

CEO Amos Meiri told the publishing house that the company is now concentrating on a specific use case that was the most in-demand among its users.

"There are a lot of other use cases for colored coins, in music, in the Internet of Things, but what we saw after a while was that more than 60% of the use cases were for local currencies. This is where our market is," Meiri said.

Using Colu’s technology, Bitt launched a version of the Barbadian dollar on the bitcoin blockchain. Following its success, Colu is launching two projects in neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, where it has created local currencies on its platform.

Colu asserts that the effort is gaining traction with users and merchants. Meiri suggested that the company is developing services for these efforts in order to make its technology easier to use. In addition, the company plans to launch local currencies in other cities across the globe, including Amsterdam and Silicon Valley.

The startup plans to use the funding to expand its team from 23 employees currently to over 30 by this year’s end as it strives to bring its technology to more users.