SALARIUM TO RAISE $20M VIA CRYPTOCURRENCY SALE

Philippine-based payment solutions company Salarium is aiming to raise up to $20 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) of its “SALPay token.”

Salarium founder and CEO Judah Hirsch said the company’s new ICO would bridge the gap for small and medium business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, freelancers and remittances in the Philippines.

“The purpose of our ICO is to provide a token utility for our business-to-business customers to remit their payroll into the Philippines,” Hirsch said. “The funds will be used to provide liquidity and license the exchange. Ourproduct is already live and working.”

The SALPay cryptocurrency token’s pre-sale ran from November 22 to 26, while the ICO is slated for November 27 to December 31, 2017.

Salarium will conduct the ICO under the symbol “SAL” using Ethereum blockchain technology. Total token amount created will be 100 million tokens and the ICO price is 1 SAL = .003 ETH.

Established in 2013, Salarium began as a payroll and human re- source software company that later on achieved a payment ecosystem status with the launch of its SALPay offering that provides companies with automated timekeeping and payroll solutions combined with an e-wallet and debit Mastercard.

Hirsch said the planned exchange would initially serve as “a large closed loop for SALPay corporate users,” which represent over 500 companies and more than 10,000 employees.

“The exchange in the Philippines will be connected to SALPay, and so our existing customer will be the first users,” he said. “We already have a few millions contributed by early investors.”

Although its head office is in Singapore, Salarium currently provides services only within the Philippines. Its clients are mostly SMEs working in a variety of industries including BPO, manufacturing, retail and IT.

In 2015, Salarium won the Seedstars World competition in Switzerland, beating 2,000 startups from the top spot. It raised a $500,000 seed round in May of the same year. Then in mid2016, the company raised $1.2 million in a funding round led by Future Now Ventures.