East Ventures Engaged in Funding of Pebble Startup

Today (24/5) East Ventures announced its involvement in the seed funding of Pebble, a New York-based payments fintech startup. This round of investment follows the debut of the company’s products after joining the Y Combinator acceleration program.

In addition to East Ventures, the $6.2 million or 91 billion Rupiah funding was also supported by Y Combinator, Lightshed Ventures, LD Capital, Soma Capital, Cadenza Capital, Eniac Ventures, and Global Founders Capital.

A number of individual investors were also involved, among them Odell Beckham Jr. (NFL superstar), Matthew Bellamy (vocalist for Muse), Richard Ma (CEO of Quantstamp), and Leore Avidar (CEO of Alt).

Pebble developed a blockchain-based digital wallet application, allowing users to store, spend, and send money efficiently.

Even through certain mechanisms, users can get benefits in the form of credits of a certain value for the nominal or transactions that occur in the application. Pebble was founded to introduce new standards in personal finance.

“Through the Pebble digital wallet, users can get 5% profit from the annual percentage yield or Annual Percentage Yield Rewards from their money, as well as 5% cashback without limits at 55 partner merchants such as Amazon, Domino’s, AirBnB, Adidas, and many more,” explains Pebble’s Co-founder & CTO Sahil Phadnis.

The company also have collaborated with Mastercard to release a debit card for their users. With a vision to empower as many people financially as possible, the company will use the fresh funds to drive its expansion into global markets. The plan is to release its app in Southeast Asia by the end of 2022.

Utilization of Blockchain in Application Systems

In the business process, when users deposit money into the application, Pebble converts it into a blockchain-based currency with a nominal value of US$ (stablecoin) called USDC (US dollar-denominated blockchain-based currency). Then, they will lend it to an officially registered financial institution.

USDC technology is considered to be able to empower the fastest and cheapest global transactions, so many major financial institutions in the world are willing to pay more to access stablecoins. All of these advantages are accessible to users without having to understand the complexities of cryptocurrencies.

Through the Pebble website, users can collect an open reward currency (named “Pebbles”) which aims to facilitate the introduction of the blockchain economy for users who are not familiar with crypto.

Basically at this point the company doesn’t have any value or function; but the currency will be key to aligning the incentives of teams, investors, merchants, partners, and users to build a new global economy on blockchain — together.

Although the company app is currently only available in the United States, the Co-founder & CEO Aaron Bai said, “The Pebble community has brought together people around the world who are passionate about building a global standard financial system on blockchain.”

The Hard Task of Building Trust

The founders of Pebble believe that mass adoption of blockchain technology will only happen if users can see the benefits before judging crypto based on stereotypes.

According to the analysis, with several events that have hit the global financial ecosystem in recent times, including the decline in the value of several stablecoins due to the crisis which gives the impression that the guarantee of value stability has failed to be proven, it is one of the toughest jobs for players like Pebble to build trust in the public.

Moreover, the main base of their service is using stablecoins. Nevertheless, the concept is interesting. Previously other crypto-earn platforms wrapped such services through a wealthtech or investment application, with the concept of the user putting a certain amount of crypto in advance to be played back.

Meanwhile, what Pebble does is to replace user habits with digital wallets that are used every day — which indirectly helps promote blockchain to a wider audience.