CoreChain Technologies, a business-to-business payments network built on blockchain technology, today announced it raised $1.25 million in pre-seed funding.

Investors joining this early funding stage included Ulu Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Bloccelerate VC and New Form Capital.

CoreChain was launched in September 2020 and has since processed over $300 million in B2B payments for enterprise buyers including transactions for PaymentWorks Inc., a business identity platform.

“B2B payments in North America are notoriously difficult, inefficient and prone to fraud risk, with the majority of all payments still settled via paper check,” said Chris Aguas, founder and chief executive of CoreChain.

The company’s solution is available as a white-label platform, which means that any bank or payment network can integrate CoreChain to offer a blockchain-based B2B payment solution to enterprise clients.

Blockchain technology uses multiple distributed copies of cryptographic ledgers to secure itself to create an auditable history of transactions. CoreChain uses this technology to store every transaction that occurs on its network to complete and record settlements to generate trust.

“CoreChain is the future of enterprise payments,” said Thayer Stewart, chief executive of PaymentWorks. “CoreChain provides a future-proof platform with immutable transaction data and offers settlement mechanisms that move dramatically faster – and with more conveniences – than legacy systems.”

With CoreChain’s platform, businesses can unlock lending opportunities to finance working capital held in unpaid invoices still held in arrears – frequently towards 30 to 120 days past due. The company also offers a trade finance “instant pay” solution integrated within its platform allowing for suppliers to accelerate payments of their invoices.

CoreChain’s technology can also natively support settling funds via digital assets and digital currencies, as well as exchanges with currency networks such as Ethereum. This allows developers and enterprise businesses to roll their own settlement methods using cryptocurrencies and digital assets and build adoption using those assets should they choose.

“The enterprise needs to be ready for the future of finance,” Aguas said. “Utilizing our blockchain technology, companies are immediately adapted for the payments revolution, and can skate to the puck wherever the game may move.”

Enterprise business payments and settlements using blockchain technology have been an expanding use case for the technology. For example, Paystand Inc., a blockchain-enabled payment network, announced $50 million in new funding in July for its own no-fee B2B network called Paystand Bank Network and Visa Inc. launched a commercial blockchain-based commercial payments system, B2B Connect, in 2019.

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