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Circle Sells Crypto Investing App Business to Voyager Digital

Circle Sells Crypto Investing App Business to Voyager Digital

(Bloomberg) -- Circle Internet Financial Ltd. agreed to sell Circle Invest, a digital-asset-investment app for individual investors, to Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd. for an equity stake in the company.

Voyager will issue common shares to Circle representing about 4% ownership in the New York-based firm, and will reimburse certain costs to Circle. Shares of Voyager traded at about 22 cents Tuesday in New York.

After initially focusing on retail-oriented crypto businesses, Circle has been pouring more resources its so-called stablecoin known as USDC. In December, the Boston-based company sold its Circle Trade over-the-counter trading business to crypto exchange Kraken. It previously unloaded its Poloniex exchange.

Voyager will add more than 40,000 retail accounts with the agreement, bringing its customer base to over 200,000 uses, the companies said in a statement. The transaction is expected to close by the end of March.

As part of the transaction, Circle and Voyager will partner on delivering fast, global, low-cost payments to the combined customer base.

“It’s transformative for Voyager in that we get to scale our business in an efficient way with such a great partner as Circle,” Steve Ehrlich, chief executive officer of Voyager, said in a phone interview.

To contact the reporter on this story: Olga Kharif in Portland at okharif@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Rita Nazareth

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.