Crypto-friendly Arival Bank is launching in beta

Arival Bank has announced that it is launching in beta and plans to provide banking accounts to crypto startups via its sponsor bank, Puerto Rico-based San Juan Mercantile Bank and Trust.

Arival was founded by a small team of fintech professionals from Russia and the US with a focus on crypto entrepreneurs and gig economy workers, who may find it hard to get business accounts with traditional banks. The company raised USD 2.4 million via a crowdfunding campaign at SeedInvest and is now raising its Series A round. Currently, the startup has offices in Singapore, Puerto Rico, and the US.

In the ‘beta’ stage, clients will only be able to open a business account with Arival, park their funds and transfer it around the world if they need it, with more options coming later in 2020.

In the pipeline for the coming months are individual accounts, card issuance, analytics products for businesses, and remittances in different currencies. Arival is also aiming to introduce lending and deposit and savings products down the road.

The fintech is using tools from the blockchain analysis company Elliptic to scan the crypto addresses that onboarding clients provide and see if there are any suspicious transactions.

While monitoring a client’s crypto dealings, Arival’s compliance department would pay attention to things like where the clients and their own customers come from, transaction volume on the wallets, ‘specific cryptocurrencies utilised, conducting a transaction with a shell company’, and other factors.

Arival applied for a Puerto Rico International Financial Entity (IFE) license in August 2018, however, it has only received a preliminary approval (‘permit to organise’) so far. The company is on its way for a full IFE license and has made overtures in other jurisdictions as well: it applied for a digital wholesale banking license in Singapore and an electronic money institution (EMI) license in Lithuania.