Bitrefill, a crypto-enabled gift card marketplace, has announced the closing of a $2 million late seed round with a number of distinguished investors from the global cryptocurrency community.
The round was led by Coin Ninja (makers of the DropBit app), with participation from Charlie Lee, Fulgur Ventures, Bnktothefuture, and others.
This funding will allow the company to continue building upon its suite of products and services for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, as well as expand into new international markets to enable more people to convert their coins into goods and services.
“We see it as a big token of trust that investors from the Bitcoin and broader cryptocurrency community have chosen to put their money behind us and support us in our growth journey.”
– Sergej Kotliar, Founder & CEO, Bitrefill
Bitrefill reports that gift card sales saw notable growth during the bear market of 2018 and grew 100% Q1 2019. Currently, the biggest product selections are for US and European customers, but the team plans to roll out a number of new products for selected other countries around the world during 2019.
“Bitrefill identified in 2017 that the Lightning Network is the most viable solution for scalable cryptocurrency payments and decided to make it a core competency of the company. We were first to market with payment acceptance and remain as the largest commercial actor on the Lightning Network. In 2019, we released the Thor & Thor Turbo products, which assist with onboarding to the Lightning Network. These services are now available via a new ThorAPI service, allowing any platform to integrate seamless channel creation, capacity management, and Bitcoin refills from Bitrefill with minimal friction.”
– The Bitrefill Team
