Gatecoin, a bitcoin exchange based in Hong Kong, is currently integrating with an international bank in Africa to allow it to provide bitcoin brokerage and blockchain remittance services in several African countries. According to Gatecoin’s co-founder and CEO Aurélien Menant, the solution will be deployed around March or April.

In an email to CoinJournal, Menant indicated that his company was also in “advanced discussions” with a Chinese, an American, and Indian and two European banks for potential partnerships.

The company has just started raising funding, Menant told the EconoTimes in an interview last week. So far, US$500K have been committed out of the US$5 million round that the company is seeking and the CEO is confident that the round will be closed by the end of Q1.

The capital will be dedicated to boost growth and expand its presence across Asia, but also help it develop new “speculative products on bitcoin,” revamp its bitcoin exchange platform, and build a mobile app, Menant said.

The next step for Gatecoin would be to seek out strategic partnership with remittance and payment companies to implement its “blockchain-infrastructure-as-a-service” solution.

Gatecoin, which publicly released its trading platform one year ago, has recorded a “very important activity.”

“Our volumes have been growing exponentially for a total of US$150 million processed so far, and we are now #1 in HK, #2 in Europe and overall in the top ten exchanges in the world,” Menant told CoinJournal.

SuperCharger Fintech Accelerator

Alongside seven other startups, Gatecoin recently joined the SuperCharger Fintech Accelerator , a 12-week program based in Hong Kong designed to assist startups with company building, mentorship and advice in areas such as market entry, regulatory obligations and joint ventures opportunities.

Triggered in October 2015, the SuperCharger Fintech Accelerator is an initiative from Standard Chartered Bank, Chinese Internet giant Baidu and co-working space operator TusPark Global Network. The program aims to help promising fintech startups “capture the Asian growth market.”

Other sponsors and partners include Microsoft, EY, Yodlee, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, Hong Kong’s leading telecommunications service provider HKT, and Invest Hong Kong, a government agency that helps overseas companies to set up and expand in Hong Kong.

Alongside Gatecoin, the only bitcoin startup to be selected, the seven other teams that joined the program include:

Amareos, a startup based in Hong Kong that uses artificial intelligence to extract market sentiments;

Funding Societies, a Singaporean peer-to-peer lending platform for small-medium enterprises;

Neat, a startup from Hong Kong that is creating the world’s first artificial intelligence-powered mobile personal financial assistant;

Eko Financial Services, an Indian peer-to-peer network for mobile payments;

Jade Payments, a stored value payments solution provider based in both the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong;

MicroCred, a company based in Hong Kong that focuses on financial inclusion in China by lending to micro and SMEs; and

WeCash, a Chinese company that uses Big Data technologies to provide credit scores and suitable financial services to users.