MoonPay, a PayPal for Crypto, on Hiring Spree With $555 Million
MoonPay, a PayPal for Crypto, on Hiring Spree With $555 Million
(Bloomberg) --
Crypto-payments company MoonPay plans to hire around 200 people and make acquisitions to accelerate growth after raising $555 million in a funding round with Tiger Global Management and Coatue Management.
Speaking in an interview, MoonPay Chief Executive Officer Ivan Soto-Wright said the company will add jobs around the world, including in Miami, where he is based. He said the company will hire full-stack engineers as well as workers for compliance, customer support and business development, more than doubling the current headcount of about 130.
“Part of why we’re raising this round is to be able to attract the best talent from anywhere in the world,” Soto-Wright said in a Zoom interview. “And we want to expand our coverage. We want to be in more countries. We want to turn on more payment methods.”
MoonPay’s fundraising is the latest sign of the mounting interest among big-name investors in crypto-focused financial technology. Despite the volatility of coin prices from one day to the next, many venture capitalists are betting that crypto itself is becoming an unstoppable juggernaut and that investments in platforms can be a way of betting on the ecosystem without picking winners among the thousands of digital assets.
For its part, MoonPay describes itself as a sort of PayPal for the crypto economy -- a business-to-business-to-consumer passport that enables more seamless transactions between individuals and crypto firms, such as purveyors on non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. It’s designed to allow users to buy and sell digital assets and NFTs via credit and debit cards; Apple, Google or Samsung Pay; or their bank accounts.
“It’s much more about integrating the many players in the ecosystem and opening it up to the user,” said Ophelia Brown, a managing partner a Blossom Capital, which participated in the fundraising.
The MoonPay founder said the fundraising valued the company at $3.4 billion, including the raised funds, a figure that was previously reported by The Information. Other investors include NEA, Paradigm and Thrive Capital.
The company says its “know-your-customer” and fraud prevention efforts, among other things, help businesses access more consumers without having to build complex infrastructure and compliance protocols from scratch.
Soto-Wright said Miami would be a major hub for the company -- a win for a region that, despite growth, has so far landed few major technology startups. Some of the few examples include augmented reality company Magic Leap Inc. and pet products e-commerce company Chewy Inc.
“We think we can be a Miami first company,” he said. “There haven’t really been really powerful technology companies based here. So we see we have an opportunity to represent the tech scene here.”
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