BitPay, a company that facilitates bitcoin and blockchain payments for corporates sending and receiving money across borders, secured $40 million in funding, the company said Tuesday (April 3).
The extended Series B round was led by a series of new investors for the company, including Menlo Ventures, Capital Nine, G Squared, Nimble Ventures and Delta-v Capital. Individual investors also participated in the funding, which brings the total raised by BitPay to more than $70 million.
In a statement, BitPay CEO Stephen Pair said the investment comes at a time of significant growth for the firm.
“BitPay had a record 2017, as we processed over $1 billion in bitcoin payments,” he said. “We brought on these new investors who can help BitPay scale globally to meet customer demand. 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.”
Reports said the funding marks Menlo Ventures’ first institutional crypto investment.
“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 Menlo Ventures partner Tyler Sosin in another statement. “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 crypto-processor, BitPay is well-positioned to both benefit from and serve the fast-moving crypto-ecosystem.”
Last December, BitPay announced plans to secure $30 million in Series B funding led by Aquiline Technology Growth, following a previous $30 million round completed in 2014.
“We’ve been able to solve some of our customers’ biggest payment problems, from multimillion-dollar B2B payments to day-to-day expenses,” Pair said at the time. “Continually improving our customers’ experience with BitPay is a priority for us as we plan our next steps for product development.”