In the same way PayPal revolutionized online person-to-person (P2P) payments and eCommerce, Ramp is looking to have the same impact with its cryptocurrency payment infrastructure platform.
On Wednesday (Dec. 15), the London-based cryptocurrency payments startup (not to be confused with New York-based corporate card startup Ramp) announced that it has raised 47 million euros (about $52.7 million) in a Series A round, aimed at increasing the adoption of decentralized applications (dApps).
Read more: Coinbase Planning Decentralized App Store Using Blockchain
The fundraising, which comes barely six months after the firm closed its $10.1 million seed round, was led by U.K.-based venture capital firm Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, NFX and Firstminute Capital, as well as angel investors including TrueLayer’s Francesco Simonesci and Taavet Hinrikus of Wise.
Commenting on the funding, Ramp Co-founder and CEO Szymon Sypniewicz said, “There is so much potential in unlocking cryptocurrency and digital assets beyond today’s narrow and restrictive use cases. We’re on a mission to provide instant access to cryptocurrencies through a provider they can trust.”
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Speaking to Sifted, Sypniewicz added, “I think 2022 is going to be pivotal for the entire [crypto] space, and the main theme will be actual use cases coming online. We’ve been waiting for it for many, many years.”
With the fresh funding, the firm intends to unlock new use cases of crypto, while making it easier for banks’ end-users to carry out cryptocurrency transactions within their banking apps. The company is also planning to increase its staff to about 300 by the end of 2022.
Founded in Warsaw in 2017, the “PayPal for crypto” startup, through its non-custodial, full-stack payment infrastructure, makes cryptocurrencies available to businesses and users who can buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency assets without having to use an exchange like Coinbase or eToro, for example.
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The firm also allows any brand or any of its 400-plus partners worldwide, including Mozilla, Axie Infinity, Opera Browser, Dapper Labs, and Trust Wallet, to offer crypto-enabled services easily and securely through the Ramp SDK, which claims to reduce the time a company takes to set up their own on-ramping stack from months to mere hours.
And so far, their approach seems to be working. According to the crypto-fiat gateway payments provider, monthly transaction volumes grew 30x over the last year, while its employees increased from 20 to 80 during the same period.
Last year, the payments startup became the first on-ramping company to receive an open banking license in Europe, issued by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF). The firm has since received regulatory approvals from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in July, and recently from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which allows it to legally operate in the U.S.
“We’ll continue to work with regulatory bodies around the world in our pursuit to connect the world’s existing financial infrastructure with the decentralized future,” the company stated in a recent blog post.