Dive Brief:

• Cross-border payments platform Keeta announced its launch Tuesday with $17 million in funding from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and other investors.
• The company plans to introduce a consumer mobile app for instant international payments to friends and family in addition to its business-centric tools, according to the news release. Fintech companies and financial firms can access the company’s payment services via its API or custom integrations.
• Santa Monica, California-based Keeta can process more than 50 million transactions per second using its “proprietary ledger technology,” which aims to reduce the processing time and cost of international money transfers, the company said in the release. For now, businesses and consumers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the U.K. and the European Union can request to use its services, the release said.

Dive Insight:

As migrants increasingly turn to remittance services to send money home to family and friends, the cross-border payments sector has ballooned in recent years. 

While Keeta vies for a share of the cross-border payments market, it faces stiff competition from current players. Paysend, the London-based international payments provider, opened a U.S. headquarters in Miami last month, a move it made to connect more worldwide Latino and Hispanic customers.

Other cross-border rivals include Remitly and Euronet, along with legacy companies MoneyGram International and Western Union. In April, MoneyGram said it was extending services across more than 500 locations of French retailer Carrefour.

However, where current cross-border payments can cost 5% of the amount transferred or more, and take almost a week to process, Keeta transfers money in seconds for 50% to 70% less than “traditional” options, the company said in the release.

Keeta’s technology “is orders of magnitude more scalable and efficient than existing solutions,” Schmidt said in the release.

“We want to make international payments as easy as Venmo,” Keeta CEO and founder Ty Schenk said in the release. The startup aims to offer more convenient and secure payments “while adhering to the highest regulatory standards,” he said.

As Keeta works to replicate the ease of peer-to-peer payment app Venmo, Venmo parent PayPal is reported to be considering a sale of its cross-border peer-to-peer payments business Xoom. 

Meanwhile, peer-to-peer payment providers have recently faced regulatory scrutiny. Earlier this month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cautioned consumers about keeping their funds in payment apps like Cash App and Venmo due to the lack of deposit insurance protection. The agency urged consumers to move their funds into FDIC-insured accounts.