Cryptocurrency investment platform, Pillow, announced it has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round and will push forward in its mission to provide “democratised access” to digital assets for emerging market investors.

The app, founded in 2021 and now recording over 75,000 users in 60 countries, aims to provide seamless and simplified access to digital assets such as cryptocurrency, to grow into emerging markets such as Africa and Southeast Asia and “create a safe, accessible, borderless crypto investment platform”.

“At Pillow, we aspire to create and reward a culture of disciplined personal finance, including savings and investments powered by access to digital assets, that enable young, hardworking, ambitious people to take control of their finances, achieve life goals and work towards financial freedom,” Arindam Roy, CEO of Pillow, said.

“We’re creating a suite of high-quality, secure, and transparent financial products that will grant our users access to global economic opportunities and let them take control of their financial future.”

The app allows users to invest and save in U.S. Dollar-backed stablecoins, as well as blue-chip cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The company said in an announcement that its user base has increased by 300 per cent since the start of 2022, with assets under management also growing by five times. Pillow also confirmed it had already expanded into Nigeria, Ghana, Vietnam and other emerging markets.

“Borderless, permissionless money has the power to change lives, particularly in emerging markets, and it can bring more people into financial systems,” Ganesh Rengaswamy, co-founder and managing partner at Quona, one of the contributors to Pillow’s funding round, said.

“What Pillow is building can remove the friction of formal financial systems for the underserved, while engaging users in savings and investing behaviors. Quona is excited to support the company on its journey.”

Vaas Bhaskar, Principal at Elevation Capital, another backer of Pillow, said the business is bridging the gap in “intuitive user-friendly platforms” for “large-scale adoption of digital assets as an investment class”.

“The growth they’ve been able to achieve since inception is testament to the quality and seamlessness of the solution,” he said.

“We’re sure that this is just the beginning and are excited to partner on this mission to build the leading emerging markets digital asset management company.”