Masa Finance, a decentralized credit protocol founded by Brendan Playford, has secured $3.5 million in pre-seed funding. The company aims to revolutionize traditional credit infrastructure by offering individuals, businesses, and developers blockchain-powered access to credit.
The concept behind Masa Finance is to leverage blockchain technology to provide decentralized access to credit, challenging the longstanding control of financial data by banks and credit bureaus. Blockchain advocates argue that the technology holds significant promise for unbanked populations, offering quicker access to financial services such as lending, borrowing, and insurance. Masa Finance bridges the gap between these traditional financial systems and decentralized finance by linking data from credit bureaus, bank accounts, and cryptocurrency holdings to generate unique credit reports for users.Playford, a blockchain and crypto industry veteran, envisions a fully decentralized future for Masa Finance, with governance evolving into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The startup, an offshoot of his previous venture Pngme, is designed to unlock financial data, provide alternative sources of capital, and enable individuals to own and share their credit history.
Masa Finance aggregates data from over 10,000 off-chain sources, such as credit bureaus and bank data, along with on-chain cryptocurrency data, to create decentralized credit profiles for users across 78 countries. This hybrid approach provides a way for developers and lenders to assess risk and launch lending products globally.
By using blockchain to centralize users’ credit information in a decentralized, self-owned format, Masa Finance aims to offer more control over personal financial data. The platform already integrates with major exchanges and wallets like Binance, Coinbase, and Metamask, helping to serve a 4.95 billion-person market, of which 67% are credit invisible.Masa’s hybrid model combines existing infrastructure with decentralized innovation, making it possible to bring more people into the decentralized finance space.
Playford emphasized that partnering with credit bureaus ensures broader coverage, which aligns with the company’s mission to provide credit bureau reports in a blockchain format.Launching from beta, Masa has already gained 36,000 sign-ups, with the majority of users from Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and the Philippines. The company also plans to collaborate with the Goldfinch lending protocol, which recently raised $25 million, to further its impact on the DeFi ecosystem.
