Arf

The company was founded in 2019 by Ali Erhat Nalbant, Berhan Kongel, Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz, and Ahmet Özcan. Ali Erhat Nalbant, the CEO, is a serial entrepreneur with a background in software development and consulting at Deloitte. Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz has a background in software engineering and blockchain consulting. Berhan Kongel is also a serial entrepreneur and served as the operations director for eleman.net, an online recruitment platform. The founders identified a significant challenge in the cross-border payments industry: the necessity for MSBs to pre-fund accounts in destination countries, which ties up vast amounts of working capital. This issue, estimated to lock up over $4 trillion globally, creates operational inefficiencies and limits growth.

Arf's core offering, Arf Credit Line, provides unsecured, short-term working capital credit lines, primarily using USDC stablecoins, built on the Stellar network. This allows MSBs to access liquidity for 1-5 day terms, enabling them to facilitate real-time, same-day settlements without needing to pre-fund or provide collateral. The business model centers on charging interest or fees for the credit used. Clients, which are licensed financial institutions, are onboarded after a creditworthiness assessment. When a payment order is received, Arf sends USDC to the client's payout partner, who then facilitates the local currency payout. The client repays Arf within the agreed short-term period. This process leverages blockchain for speed, transparency, and lower costs compared to traditional correspondent banking and SWIFT rails.

In October 2022, Arf raised $13 million in a seed round from investors including Circle Ventures, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), UOB Venture Management, Hard Yaka, and Signum Capital. The company holds a VQF license in Switzerland, ensuring compliance with anti-money laundering regulations. As of March 2024, Arf had surpassed $1 billion in on-chain liquidity volume. Keywords: cross-border payments, working capital, liquidity solutions, stablecoin settlement, money service business, USDC credit line, fintech, blockchain finance, real-time settlement, treasury management, payment financing, digital assets, Stellar network, financial institutions, on-chain liquidity, regulated fintech, trade finance, global payments, RWA tokenization, payment rails