Alta, a financial infrastructure company, has raised US$47.5 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures.

The round lifts its total funding to US$80 million and backs its development of blockchain infrastructure designed around the privacy and compliance requirements of regulated financial institutions.

GV (Google Ventures), Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg and Capital 49 joined the round, which follows US$32.5 million in earlier seed financing.

Alta said it will use the capital to develop its infrastructure, expand its institutional partnerships and global financial connectivity, and grow its engineering and compliance teams.

Alta said existing blockchains do not meet the privacy and compliance requirements of global financial institutions.

The company is building infrastructure to support transactions across different assets, blockchain networks and jurisdictions. It also aims to meet the operational requirements of regulated financial institutions.

“Existing blockchains aren’t designed for the privacy and compliance requirements of global financial institutions,”

“We’re taking a fundamentally different approach, building privacy, programmable compliance, and identity and authorisation directly into the blockchain.”

The technology is built on a blockchain architecture using recursive zero-knowledge cryptography.

It allows institutions to keep balances, transactions, identities and compliance policies private while verifying that transactions meet the required rules.

Alta’s first product will focus on helping businesses manage liquidity more efficiently and reduce the capital tied up in prefunded accounts.

The company estimates that businesses hold about US$4 trillion in prefunded accounts globally.

Built on tokenised assets, the product will support just-in-time funding, more efficient foreign exchange and the ability for businesses to move instantly in and out of yield-bearing tokenised assets, allowing them to earn interest on otherwise idle capital.

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