South Africa’s Troygold, which enables gold owners to digitize their physical gold and use it for daily transactions via a mobile app and gold-backed MasterCard, has secured funding from Crossfin Ventures, the angel investment arm of Crossfin Technology Holdings. With the funds received, Troygold will expand the banking and financial services backed by gold.
Founded by brother duo Dane and Bastiat Viljoen, Troygold was created after the founders saw the effects of money printing and the debt-based financial system. Having worked in the investment banking sector, the duo turned their attention to understanding the gold value chain and created the Troygold platform that would extend digital financial services to physical gold owners.
Launched in 2018, Troygold digitizes gold bullion and Krugerrands, enabling customers to buy, spend and borrow against their gold. Vaulted gold bars or coins with serial numbers are digitized via Troy gold’s system, offering whole or fractional ownership. Each buyer receives an ownership certificate that indicates which bar or coin (with indicated serial number) that the customer owns along with details as to where it is stored. Currently, the fintech has storage facilities in Singapore and Johannesburg.
Troygold offers two options to their customers that is a free gold savings account that digitizes the customer’s gold stores of value and a MasterCard-backed gold debit card which enables gold owners to purchase goods and services at any of the 40 million MasterCard accepting stores globally.
With the undisclosed amount of investment from Crossfin Ventures, Troygold focuses on scaling its services to more South Africans wishing to free themselves form the inflationary effects of flat currency and enjoy the stability and financial freedom that gold brings.Crossfin’s portfolio companies currently processes more than US$5 billion in point of scale transactions annually from over 152 million transactions across more than 20,000 retail stores and 38,500 clients.
Troygold enables consumers save, spend and borrow against physical gold with a Troygold physical Gold account and Gold backed Debit Card.