Crypto digital banking firm Juno has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round to expand its product and operational offerings, as well as to release its first tokenized loyalty program.
ParaFi Capital’s Growth Fund led this round, and Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee, Messari’s Ryan Selkis, Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani, and a16z‘s Sriram Krishnan, among other well-known crypto industry figures, supported it. Former Coinbase Chief Technology Officer Balaji Srinivasan and FTX’s Venu Palaparthi were seed backers.
Juno Digital Banking Platform
The Juno digital banking platform enables users to spend cryptocurrency in their daily transactions by using the Juno card, which enables them to transact with Circle’s stablecoin USDC.
In an effort to raise money, Juno is issuing a loyalty token, the Juno coin (JCOIN). JCOINs (Juno coins) will only be given to verified account holders as part of the loyalty program. Members can earn JCOINs by receiving their paychecks in cryptocurrency or by spending cryptocurrency with their Juno debit card.
Varun Deshpande, CEO and co-founder of Juno, told Logll that his company believes these banks are not crypto-friendly. He said that the goal of the loyalty program is to incentivize crypto users who are already predisposed to using crypto to switch to traditional banking.
According to Deshpande, earning and using crypto are critical financial primitives for creating and growing a circular crypto economy. Tokenized loyalty programs are meant to further accelerate the growth of this economy.”
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