Remi Secures $135,000 to Develop Confidential Blockchain-Based Financial Settlements

Remi, a fintech company founded by Egyptians and headquartered in the UAE, has secured a grant of approximately $135,000 from the Stellar Community Fund to build confidential financial settlement infrastructure on the Stellar network. The funding will finance development of a privacy-preserving settlement layer that targets banks, exchange companies and payment service providers, enabling them to execute and settle digital transactions without publicly exposing transfer values or party balances.

"Privacy Does Not Mean the Absence of Oversight," Remi says, framing the project’s dual objective of protecting sensitive financial data while preserving the ability for authorised regulators to access specific information when necessary.

Remi plans to rely on Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to achieve selective transparency on a public ledger. As the company describes its approach: "Instead of treating absolute transparency as a fundamental advantage, Remi aims to build infrastructure that allows the minimum necessary amount of information to be shared while maintaining the ability to verify transactions." Using ZKPs, Remi will allow participants to prove the validity of a transaction or that it meets specific conditions without revealing underlying sensitive data.

What Remi will build

• Confidential settlement primitives on the Stellar network using Zero-Knowledge Proofs.
• Mechanisms to allow Remi to cover network fees on behalf of financial institutions, removing the need for banks to hold or manage cryptocurrencies directly.
• Open tools for the financial sector, including dashboards, transaction management tools, a software development kit (SDK) and indicators for transaction execution costs.

The Stellar Community Fund grant is explicitly intended to move Remi from testing toward live deployment on Stellar. The company says the funding will support not only the cryptographic and protocol work but also a suite of open tools for institutions and developers. That combination — privacy-preserving primitives plus practical tooling — is aimed at proving the technology can meet institutional, regulatory and security requirements at scale.

Remi argues that removing the need for banks to own cryptocurrencies will lower a key barrier to blockchain adoption. By developing a mechanism that covers network fees on behalf of financial institutions, the company expects banks and payment providers to interact with the settlement infrastructure without directly holding or managing digital assets, simplifying operational and compliance burdens.

Context and market relevance

The project targets a core tension that has limited blockchain uptake in regulated finance: the conflict between distributed-ledger transparency and the confidentiality demands of banks. Remi frames its work as part of a broader shift from full, public transparency toward "selective transparency," where transactions remain verifiable while sensitive details are shielded from unauthorised parties.

The grant underscores the growing role of Arab-founded fintech teams in building infrastructure for global financial markets. Remi’s leadership sees the Stellar deployment as the first real test: not just demonstrating cryptographic feasibility, but showing the model can be operationalised by regulated institutions across markets.

Looking ahead, success will be measured by adoption among banks, exchanges and payment services, and by regulators’ willingness to accept selective-disclosure models backed by ZKPs. If Remi’s approach is accepted, privacy could move from being a blocker to a core feature of next-generation blockchain financial infrastructure.