London-based fintech startup SETL has announced the opening of its Paris office in order to boost its activities in the Eurozone.

The announcement follows the opening of SETL’s Global Engineering Centre in Ipswich, UK last month. The centre was officially opened by Ben Gummer, Member of Parliament for Ipswich and Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General and by Chairman of the SETL board Sir David Walker.

Launched in July 2015, SETL is working towards deploying a multi-asset, multi-currency institutional payment and settlements infrastructure based on blockchain technology. It said that the system will enable market participants to move cash and assets directly between each other, facilitating the immediate and final settlement of market transactions. The SETL system maintains a permissioned, distributed ledger of ownership and transaction records, simplifying the process of matching, settlement, custody, registration and transaction reporting.

By opening an office in Paris, SETL intends to bring the benefits of its blockchain infrastructure to the French market and the wider eurozone. The move will improve SETL’s capacity to deal with any future regulatory or other changes in the EU financial markets.

The new office will be led by Pierre Davoust, formerly Deputy Head of the Financial Markets Unit at the French Treasury, who is appointed CEO France at SETL.

"We are delighted to open an office in Paris and to welcome Pierre Davoust into the SETL team. Having put sterling on to the blockchain, this latest development demonstrates that SETL wants to bring the benefit of its infrastructure to the eurozone”, Peter Randall, CEO of SETL, stated.

“Paris is a large financial centre, with a particularly strong asset management community. So it is a logical step for SETL to develop a local presence in Paris as we aim to put end-users of financial markets, such as issuers and investors, at the centre of our strategy”, Davoust said. “France has a rich technological and regulatory ecosystem, with a high-level IT and cryptography community, and ongoing reforms in the field of securities law, which is a very well-suited environment for the development of a best-in-class blockchain infrastructure”.