Wallet-as-a-service platform Dfns has raised a $16 million Series A funding, led by Further Ventures, part of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, ADQ. It follows a seed round of $13 million in 2022. Existing investors participating in the round included Bpifrance, Hashed, Semantic, Techstars and White Star Capital. Other new investors are Motive Partners, Wintermute, and Motier Ventures (Galeries Lafayette Group).
Dfns boasts more than 130 clients in banking, custody, tokenization and trading. They include ABN AMRO, Digital Asset, Fidelity International, Stripe and a recent addition, Standard Chartered’s Zodia Custody.
Two years ago Dfns switched its focus to institutions, including fintechs and so far more than ten million wallets have been created using its technology. However, by crypto standards its figures are modest: it secures over $5 billion in assets.
The company is not targeting rapid growth, with plans to expand its staff from 25 to 35 over the coming year. Its focus is on the major markets: US, EU, UK and UAE.
However, it’s up against some big, well funded competitors such as Fireblocks, which has raised over $1 billion in funding and Anchorage Digital, where backers invested almost half that. While primarily known as crypto custody technology providers, they both provide a wallet-as-a-service solution.
Notably, Zodia Custody only partnered with Dfns in December. Standard Chartered was an early backer of custody tech firm Metaco, which was acquired by Ripple and became Ripple Custody. Hence, if Zodia has adopted Dfns, perhaps other Ripple Custody clients might too. One of the features Dfns boasts is the support of a very wide range of blockchains. It claims to have “full compatibility with all blockchains and digital asset types.”
In a blog post, the Co-CEOs noted the difference between wallets and key management, although it also provides some key services. “We see that the distinction between keys and wallets is becoming clearer. Key management services focus on generating and securing digital signatures, while wallet infrastructures handle the full transaction lifecycle—creating, broadcasting, and managing multichain interactions independently,” they wrote.
