Today, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced a grant of up to US$850,000 to help Vottun showcase its Stellar-powered solution for intra-company cross-border payments.

Vottun will integrate their payments platform onto Stellar, which will enable corporate clients to tokenize intra-company payments using Stellar-based digital currencies and seamlessly execute and settle payments. Multinational professional services network PwC will join forces with Vottun to test the solution, providing guidance and trusted expertise in banking and financial services to support the project. Working with PwC and SDF, Vottun will provide companies with a compliant solution that permits them to transact and operate between different geographies.

After the announcement was made, Vottun CEO, Luis Carbajo, commented, “We are very proud and humbled to work with the Bank of Spain and all the Spanish regulatory agencies involved in testing our platform for cross-border transactions.”

Javier Hernando, Finance Function Partner at PwC Spain, said, “Vottun shares our vision that the financial services industry is ready for a digital revolution. Blockchain technology is one of the components of this digital transformation and PwC is committed to understanding how blockchain can be used to advantage our customers.”

By integrating onto Stellar, Vottun will leverage the power of Stellar’s stable, secure, and decentralized network and industry-leading compliance capabilities. Luis Carbajo said, “We see blockchain, and our integration with Stellar specifically, as a strategic next step for our business, offering us the ability to provide cheaper, faster and fully compliant payments for our customers. Vottun looks forward to working with central banks and financial institutions in their transition into the digital economy.”

Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of SDF, said, “The Sandbox’s objective of understanding digital solutions and adapting regulation to their pace is laudable. We welcome this opportunity to show Spanish regulators how payment solutions built on Stellar can provide certainty, safety, and control—all within an open network that encourages innovation.”

The Sandbox is a testing environment that supports the development of innovative finance projects, with real users, under a secure framework. It received over 67 submissions for the current cohort. The final participants were selected by monetary policy and technical experts from the CNMV and the Central Bank of Spain. Vottun is one of only three startups selected among a cohort of mostly large banks. After a six-month trial period in the Sandbox, the goal is for Vottun to emerge with the legal and regulatory certainty that it needs to operate in a compliant way in this rapidly evolving market.