BitPay, a leading blockchain payments provider, this week closed its $40 million extended Series B funding round, which brings its total raised capital to over $70 million. New investors in BitPay include Menlo Ventures, Capital Nine, G Squared, Nimble Ventures (an affiliate of Passport Capital) and Delta-v Capital as well as individual investments from Christopher Klauss Family Office, Founder of Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alvin Liu, Co-founder of Tencent. Aquiline Capital Partners led the initial Series B Round in December but extended the round due to increased investor demand.
“BitPay had a record 2017 as we processed over $1 Billion in bitcoin payments. We brought on these new investors who can help BitPay scale globally to meet customer demand,” said Stephen Pair, BitPay CEO. “Our goals include key hires in engineering and regulatory licensing, as well as expansion into emerging markets in Asia–one of BitPay’s fastest-growing regions for transactions and wallet adoption.”
Menlo Ventures selected BitPay as its first institutional crypto investment after spending significant time researching the broader crypto and blockchain ecosystem. Menlo is committed to thesis-based investing and prioritizes companies that are reshaping large and important markets through technology- and process-driven breakthroughs. Poised to profoundly change a rapidly evolving industry, BitPay joins the Menlo portfolio alongside leading companies such as Uber, Betterment, Roku, BlueVine and Warby Parker.
“We gravitated towards BitPay because we felt the company had identified a killer use for crypto in facilitating low-cost payment solutions for cross-border commerce and B2B payments, which is a massive market poorly served by the existing payment rails,” said Tyler Sosin, a partner at Menlo Ventures. “We are impressed with the company’s execution—it has demonstrated extremely efficient growth and a stickiness with merchants and consumers that is the hallmark of many great payment service providers. As the market-leading cryptoprocessor, BitPay is well positioned to both benefit from and serve the fast-moving crypto-ecosystem.”
Asia is a growing region for BitPay, and, as a result, a significant portion of the Series B investors are from this region. Capital Nine is an Asian fintech corporation and investor with millions of customers across Asia. Other investors from Asia include Alvin Liu, co-founder of Tencent and Yong An Financial Holdings Co., Ltd.
“Bitcoin’s popularity is spreading rapidly throughout Asia and BitPay has an opportunity to extend its technology solutions across Asia,” said Sam Lin, director of Capital Nine. “BitPay’s cross-border payment solution helps businesses pay or receive international payments faster and more economically.”
Renowned security expert and technology entrepreneur, Christopher Klaus founded Internet Security Systems (ISS), turning it into one the first large Internet security companies selling to IBM for $1.3 Billion in 2006.
“Security is extremely important to the blockchain network and BitPay,” said Christopher Klaus. “I have been watching the cryptocurrency space and believe BitPay is able to disrupt the financial services worldwide through payment processing and cross-border payments in large part because of the security built into blockchain.”
Hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world have signed up with BitPay to accept bitcoin payments, including popular brands like Microsoft, Newegg, Namecheap, Gyft, Takeaway, and Virgin Galactic. BitPay works with over 30 e-commerce and point of sale integrators to promote the use and acceptance of bitcoin. The BitPay Wallet consumer adoption is growing with a monthly average of more than $3 billion in transactions. BitPay achieved record growth in 2017, increasing revenues by nearly 700%, and remains profitable in 2018.
In 2014, BitPay raised a $30 million Series A round from investors such as Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Felicis Ventures, RRE Ventures and Sir Richard Branson.