Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and Nas invest in Crypto Valora app

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Valora allows users to send encrypted payments via SMS. The startup has secured an investment from famous backers, including Kevin Durant and Nas. Andreessen Horowitz led Valora’s $ 20 million Series A in July following its split from Celo Labs.

Sending money abroad can be a logistical challenge and prohibitively expensive for many. Valora, a peer-to-peer crypto app, is turning to stablecoins as a way to help people avoid high transfer and exchange fees by sending money through its app via SMS.

The startup has just added a host of famous investors to help grow its user base. New high-profile donors include NBA stars Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony, musicians Nasir ‘Nas’ Jones and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, and YouTuber Casey Neistat.

The funding, the amount of which was not disclosed, follows Valora’s $ 20 million Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz in July.

“Along with a lot of these investors, they were really keen to help us on this mission of not only reaching their communities and fans around financial inclusion and financial empowerment, but this was really about how we let’s change the narrative about crypto and their ability to access opportunities, ”Valora CEO Jackie Bona told Insider.

The Valora app is a digital wallet that allows users to send and receive encrypted payments worldwide via SMS without the need for a bank account.

The fintech, which launched in February, was created out of Celo Labs, a blockchain startup that powers cUSD and cEURO stablecoins.

Users can send three types of digital currencies: CELO, cUSD, and cEURO cryptocurrency. The last two are stable coins whose values ​​are indexed to the US dollar and the euro, respectively.

Once received, users can transfer cryptocurrencies out of the Valora wallet in a number of ways, including cryptocurrency wallets and gift cards.

Stablecoins are considered a less volatile alternative to traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, as they are often tied to fiat currency.

As stablecoins gain in popularity, regulators have taken note. On Monday, the Biden administration asked Congress to begin monitoring stablecoins, which, if “properly regulated,” could allow faster and more inclusive movement of money, the administration said.

Bona has a background in product marketing, having led go-to-market efforts at Google, Twitter and Spotify.

Valora’s famous new investors got involved through the Cultural Leadership Fund, a partnership between Andreessen Horowitz and cultural leaders led by Chris Lyons, general partner of a16z.

The fund invests in a16z portfolio companies with the aim of “enabling more young African Americans to enter the tech industry,” according to its website. All fund management fees are donated to non-profit organizations focused on diversity and inclusion in the tech industry.

“Especially for blockchain technology, it’s a new industry, a whole new technology and a new financial system that we’re building through it,” Bona said. “And if we don’t get diverse people and diverse voices in the mix, it will be the same.”

Valora is being built for an international market

Valora charges fees as low as 0.001 cUSD per transaction and currently has more than 200,000 users, a spokesperson said.

During its early months, the startup was used by organizations like the Grameen Foundation to send emergency relief payments to people in the Philippines. impactMarket, another organization that uses blockchain to send a universal basic income to impoverished communities around the world, uses Valora to pay users in places like Brazil, Ghana, the Philippines and Zimbabwe.

Many Valora users live in mobile-centric markets, where consumers often have access to smartphones before they have access to bank accounts. Valora only needs a phone number to send and receive payments, and users can exchange funds in different ways, depending on the market.

In Kenya, for example, Valora is partnering with M-Pesa, a digital wallet managed by Kenya’s largest mobile service provider. In the United States, users can transfer their balances to other crypto wallets or via gift cards for merchants like Starbucks, Uber, and Whole Foods.

“One of the opportunities that we see for ourselves in the future is to be able to make the ramps in and out of crypto to normal money,” Bona said. “But we’re just getting started, and it’s a very difficult problem to solve.”

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