Wyre, a San Francisco-based blockchain startup, has raised $5.8 million in Series A funding led by Chinese Venture firm Amphora Capital with participation from two of the largest payments companies in China 9fBank and Baofoo.com, along with Digital Currency Group, Draper Associates and other prominent Silicon Valley angel investors.

“It is estimated that the demand for cross-border payment from Chinese companies and investors could reach $1.5 trillion USD within the next five years. Wyre is well positioned as a market leader to facilitate those transactions faster and at a lower cost. We believe Wyre’s cross-border technology will revolutionize global payment and remittance and have since made a sizable investment into the company,” said Sam Lin, chief financial officer of 9fBank.com. “Wyre’s continued tremendous growth in 2016 will no doubt carry into 2017 and years beyond.”

In addition, the startup has launched its cross-border payments platform also called Wyre, which will enable businesses to move money across borders from country-to-country at a super competitive foreign exchange rate. Currently, there’s a monthly volume of $35M being transferred in cross-border business payments via the blockchain and Wyre accounts for 90% of those transactions.

Wyre uses blockchain technology to reduce the amount of time and money it takes to make cross-border payments. It takes deposits from large payment companies that plug into their API. The payment companies pass across thousands of transactions onto Wyre’s blockchain-based payment rails. Wyre then delivers the funds as instructed at the most competitive rate possible, usually at a rate between ~1 - 4.5% and in the shortest amount of time, typically in less than six hours, compared to the industry standard which is 24-72 hours.

“Current wire services are difficult, expensive and take too long. In a generation of instant gratification, we believe that money transfer should be too,” said Michael Dunworth, chief executive officer and co-founder, Wyre.  

Speaking of international transfers, Wyre says that it processes over $1M in international payments per day, with nearly 25% month-over-month growth. The company sees itself as one of the largest cross-border payment platforms within the next 12 months.

“Wyre has revolutionized international payments,” said Yuanbo Wang, chief executive officer of You.World, former chief executive officer of NihaoPay. “Our customers are happier than ever with the speed and super low cost of money transfers.”

Wyre has been operating in a private beta for the past 10 months with select large-scale business, including NihaoPay that powers payments for WeChat.