Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

By Michael del Castillo  /Forbes Marwan Forzely has come a long way since his days at Western Union. The serial entrepreneur, who sold his previous company to Western Union to help the money-transfer giant directly connect to customer bank accounts, has raised $25 million to cut intermediary banks out of the payment process altogether. Instead of relying on a series of correspondents to move money between different jurisdictions around the world, Marwan’s latest venture, Veem, uses bitcoin to directly connect its clients’ bank accounts with suppliers and customers. While neither counterparty is required to directly hold bitcoin, and an algorithm automatically routes transactions along the most efficient payment rails, more than half the transactions processed by Veem rely on the cryptocurrency as a replacement for correspondents. Led by banking giant Goldman Sachs, with GV (formally Google Ventures), Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley Bank, Trend ...