Luno, a bitcoin exchange with offices in London, South Africa, and Hong Kong today announced an expansion of company services to several new European markets. Now, people from 40 countries around the world can buy, sell and store bitcoin with Luno.
At the same time, the company also announced a recently closed $9 million USD Series B round, led by one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms, Balderton Capital. The round included a new investor: AlphaCode, the fintech investment arm of South African headquartered Rand Merchant Investment Holdings (RMI).
Last but not least, New York City-headquartered venture capital company Digital Currency Group, who already has a stake in Luno, participated in the round.
During Luno’s Series A round, emerging market tech giant, Naspers led the round along with Southeast Asian venture capital firm Venturra Capital.
Putting Funds to Use
The Luno team reported that they will focus heavily on improving and refining user experience on their website and platform. Furthermore, they will also look at doubling the existing team of 70 in hiring across all units, from engineering and product to business development, customer support and compliance across all three company hubs starting with the Luno HQ in London, and offices in Singapore and Cape Town.
Regarding the Series B round, Luno CEO and co-founder Marcus Swanepoel stated:
“We’ve known the Balderton team for many years and we’ve been impressed with their wealth of experience in helping global businesses scale and achieve success; their experience and networks, our shared vision for the industry, and a strong alignment of values make them fantastic partners for the next stage of our journey.”
“We’ve also known RMI for many years and given their extensive experience in the financial services sector and working closely with management teams to build a number of industry-defining companies, we’re also very excited to have them on board.”
Mr. Swanepoel put the short history of the company into perspective adding:
“From our early roots of being the first company in the world to build a fully-integrated bitcoin pilot system for a major bank, over the subsequent few years launching consumer wallets, exchanges, and merchant services to become the market leader in Southeast Asia and Africa, starting to build our UK presence in 2016 and now finally launching across the wider Europe: we are now one giant leap closer to our goal of bringing digital currency to everyone, everywhere.”
