Glint, a stealthy London fintech startup that promises a new “global currency,” has raised £3.1 million from a plethora of individual backers in the financial services and asset management space, alongside early-stage investor Bray Capital.
They comprise Haruko Fukuda, former CEO of the World Gold Council and NED of Investec Bank; Oliver Bolitho, formerly Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management Asia; Hugh Sloane, co-founder of asset manager Sloane Robinson; and Lord Flight Of Worcester, formerly of Guinness Flight Global Asset Management.
The Glint website describes the startup as “a new global currency, account and app” and says it will make your money “reliable and independent” and give you more control in the way you “store, spend, exchange and transfer money”. If that all sounds a bit vague —
aside from alluding to a new (and more) stable currency tied to a payments app — it’s probably intended to be. The company isn’t pegged to launch until the last quarter of this year.
However, I understand that Glint will offer a frictionless way to both store and spend your money in gold, including at the point of sale, just like a regular local currency. The bigger picture is that gold historically has been a better storage of value than any government-created currency, and therefore — with the aid of technology — is (arguably) a good candidate for an alternative global currency. The startup has already been authorised and is regulated by the U.K.’s FCA, under, presumably, an Electronic Money Institution license.
Meanwhile, Glint’s founders both know a thing or two about gold.
CEO Jason Cozens co-founded GoldMadeSimple.com, a website that helps clients buy and sell physical gold and have it stored securely or delivered. He also previously founded two other companies: Visuality — where he is said to have pioneered Virtual Reality, e-commerce and online marketing, selling to ERP software company McGuffie Brunton — and Bite, a digital marketing agency.
Glint COO Ben Davies is said to have over 17 years’ experience within international financial and commodity markets. He was the former head of trading at RBS Greenwich, and co-founded Hinde Capital in 2007, an alternative investment management company specialising in precious metals.