Intercontinental Exchange, a leading operator of global exchanges and clearing houses and provider of data and listings services, today announced that it has agreed to acquire Bridge2 Solutions, a leading provider of loyalty solutions for merchants and consumers.
Following the completion of the transaction, Bakkt, a majority-owned subsidiary of ICE, intends to acquire Bridge2 Solutions from ICE using proceeds from Bakkt’s Series B round of funding.
Since launching the Bakkt Warehouse in 2019, along with its growing suite of bitcoin futures and options contracts, Bakkt has worked to bring trust, stability, and innovation to the digital asset trading market.
When Bridge2 Solutions ultimately joins Bakkt, the strategic combination will accelerate the development of the Bakkt consumer application, which will provide digital asset aggregation, conversion, and payments through a single platform.
“Bakkt was created to help bring transparency and trust to the previously unregulated digital asset markets. With the launch of the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt futures and options markets, the company has achieved quick success with its custody and trading offering. Bakkt’s second round of funding, and its acquisition of Bridge2 Solutions, will help accelerate the development of Bakkt’s consumer application, which has been a key part of our strategy since we first looked at this market.”
– Jeffrey Sprecher, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of ICE
Bridge2 + Bakkt
Today, Bridge2 Solutions enables some of the world’s leading brands to engage customers and drive loyalty. It powers programs for seven of the top ten financial institutions and 4,500 loyalty, incentive and employee perk programs for companies across a wide spectrum of industries.
The company’s Loyalty Pay solution expands the value of rewards programs and gives consumers a universal ability to pay with reward currencies both at the point of sale (POS) in retail stores and in-app through digital wallets. Integrating with Bakkt will allow top retail brands to offer loyalty programs and help consumers unlock and access the value in those programs. Whether they are monetizing loyalty points from a favorite airline or trading skins for a video game, the Bakkt wallet app will enable consumers to trade and spend their digital assets freely.
“With the launch of the Bakkt app, we will, for the first time, offer consumers a robust platform to consolidate and use all of their digital assets, from crypto to loyalty points to in-game tokens, in one user-friendly wallet. Combining Bridge2 Solutions’ embedded relationships with banks and merchants and their innovative Loyalty Pay solution will enable us to launch new products that further drive loyalty and empower consumers to trade, transfer and spend digital assets in entirely new ways.”
– Mike Blandina, CEO of Bakk
The terms of ICE’s acquisition of Bridge2 Solutions, the closing was not disclosed.
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