Israeli startup ZenGo recently secured $20 million in Series A funding from Insight Partners (who also recently led an investment in Materials Zone). The round also saw participation from Distributed Global, Austin Rief Ventures, and existing investors Benson Oak Ventures, Samsung Next, Elron, Collider Ventures, FJ Labs, and others.

A keyless credit card

ZenGo develops crypto wallets, which support trade in over 50 different cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Tezos, and Terra. Now, ZenGo may sound just like every other wallet on the market, but the Israeli company’s wallet is supposed to solve 2 main challenges facing the cryptocurrency world, and according to many, the main reasons crypto hasn’t fully gone mainstream yet.

The first problem is with use of crypto coins. Even if you were smart enough to stack up on a few Bitcoin, there really aren’t many places where the currency can be used, other than when buying a Tesla, for example, which doesn’t happen often. ZenGo is hard at work these days developing in collaboration with Visa, a type of credit card that will allow customers to purchase everyday items with cryptocurrencies as if it was a regular charge, anywhere Visa is accepted.

The other big issue hindering the crypto realm are private keys, or Seed keys. That same keyword, which whoever holds it can control the crypto asset, is easily forgotten or lost, often locking the asset owner out of their account. According to ZenGo, its keyless wallet is  based on Multiparty Computation (MPC) that replaces traditional single point of failure security with distributed secret shares and facial biometrics.

"We believe that a true crypto-based future will require solutions that are radically simple, mobile-first, and built on-chain", said Ouriel Ohayon Co-founder and CEO at ZenGo. The company was founded in 2018 by Ohayon, Gary Benattar (advisor), VP R&D Tal Be’ery, and VP Research Omer Shlomovitz, and currently employs a team of 20 from its Tel Aviv offices.