Layer 1 blockchain Elrond Network was granted approval to acquire Romanian payments firm Twispay for undisclosed terms, a tie-up that brings an electronic money (eMoney) license from Romania’s central bank, according to a press release on Thursday (March 10).
Twispay is licensed as a financial institution in Romania to issue eMoney and provide payment services. The startup can issue Visa cards, issue and acquire MasterCards, and can operate across the entire EEA — European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
“This landmark decision from the Romanian Central Bank opens the door for EU citizens, and soon for everyone everywhere, to significantly benefit from value flowing with near-instant settlement times, at 100x fewer costs, with full transparency, and higher reliability,” said Beniamin Mincu, founder and CEO of the Elrond Network.
Headquartered in Malta and launched in 2020, Elrond is striving to boost the utility of eMoney by integrating it with cost-effective, fast, scalable blockchain technology.
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The central bank’s decision comes as the EU is exploring the limitation of Proof of Work blockchain networks because of their high energy usage and the resulting negative climate impact. Elrond said it maintains a carbon negative by offsetting more CO2 than its network is accountable for.
As a licensed eMoney institution with Twispay, Elrond is entitled to provide payments services and issue stablecoins that can be offered in the EU or traded on an exchange.
“This puts Elrond in a strategic position to offer a sustainable infrastructure for completely new payment rails that is faster, cheaper, transparent, and open to people all around the world,” according to the press release.
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Additional use cases that could be explored include the issuance of new stablecoins, cryptocurrency-enabled debit cards, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and “Web3 technologies that will enhance trust and efficiency for existing financial systems.”
Elrond’s blockchain architecture was custom designed from the ground up and can process over 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) with 5-second latency. The acceleration in processing and performance speed was achieved with Elrond’s Adaptive State Sharding mechanism and a Secure Proof of Stake algorithm.