Last Updated on October 2, 2022 by Bitfinsider

As part of its tokenized loyalty program, Juno, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency company that offers checking accounts in the United States, has released a native token and acquired $18 million in a Series A fundraising round.

Hashed, Jump Crypto, Uncorrelated Fund, Greycroft, 6th Man Ventures, and others also invested in the round, which was led by ParaFi Capital. Varun Deshpande, co-founder and CEO of Juno, stated that this equity round was completed two months ago.

Three years have passed since Juno’s $3 million seed investment round in 2019 before its Series A round. Polychain Capital and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program jointly led that round. Regarding Juno’s valuation in the most recent round, Deshpande declined to comment.

Residents of the United States can earn, invest, and spend cryptocurrency with checking accounts offered by Juno. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures and covers all of its checking accounts for free. According to the website for Juno, “The Juno Checking Account (which holds USD deposits) is sponsored by Evolve Bank & Trust and is FDIC insured up to $250,000.”

The checking account enables users to spend cash and cryptocurrencies via a debit card, buy and sell cryptocurrency, and earn interest on deposits. Deshpande said: “We primarily compete with banks like Wells Fargo or Chase. In crypto, our closest competitors are Eco, Crypto.com, Strike and Robinhood.”

Loyalty Tokens, JCOIN

Today, Juno also unveiled a tokenized loyalty program that would give verified users the JCOIN ERC20 token as a reward for specific platform actions. These include depositing money into the Juno account, such as paychecks, and making purchases using the Juno debit card.

According to the website for Juno, the rewards given to users for their actions are set at 1:1, which means that if someone receives or spends $1,000 in their Juno account, they will receive a reward of 1,000 JCOINs. JCOINs are known as “loyalty tokens” by the company.

According to Juno, the company will not give JCOINs to its workers or investors, and it also won’t support secondary trading of the tokens. According to Deshpande, token holders will be able to purchase goods from partner companies, starting with the producer of crypto hardware wallets Ledger. The company has already produced 1 billion JCOINs, and after these run out, it intends to produce 1 billion more tokens. The token has an unlimited supply.

According to a snapshot taken on September 30, Juno claims that more than 75,000 users are entitled to get 150 million free JCOINs in an airdrop today.

With further funding, Juno intends to grow its personnel, product portfolio, and loyalty program. According to Deshpande, there are currently 80 individuals working for Juno, 75 of them are in India and 5 are in the United States. In the upcoming 12 months, it is intended to increase both the U.S. team and the overall team to 150.

Regarding geographic expansion, Juno intends to keep concentrating on the American market “for the foreseeable future,” according to Deshpande. But, he continued: “We are excited about potentially launching in Latin America.”