Simple co-founder bids to upend financial world with APIs and a stablecoin

Named for the world’s first ‘token’ – a small bowl used by the Sumerians in 3000 BC to measure a standardised volume of barley – Sila is aiming to overhaul and democratise the financial services world using APIs and distributed ledger technology.

Karkal argues that efforts to innovate in the current financial system have been stymied by a “long chain of middlemen engaged in moving money between a buyer and a seller”.

Despite being, until recently, a self-described crypto-sceptic, his answer to the problem is a an API platform and suite of developer tools supported by a new regulatory-compliant, fiat-backed tokenised means of exchange – the Sila Token – that allows developers to rapidly build fintech applications and bring them to market.

The dollar-pegged Sila token will form the base for a fintech API platform that will enable fast, regulatory-compliant payments and other uses of money with minimal reliance on the traditional banking system, cutting out the likes of Swift and Visa.

Karkal has secured seed funding from Jerry Neumann, Taavet Hinrikus, Iyin Aboyeji, Village Global, Mucker Capital, and 99 Tartans for his startup, which plans to launch the alpha of its APIs over the next few months.

The former BBVA head of Open APIs has also put together a team that includes ex-Bank of America global quants chief and current MIT fellow Alexander Lipton as CTO; Digital Assets Holdings veteran Angela Angelovska-Wilson as chief legal officer; and energy sector specialist Isaac Hines as COO.

Initially, the platform will have five APIs: