Cryptocurrency payments app MoonPay has entered into a strategic partnership with BCB Group, a business-to-business provider of banking rails to crypto companies.
The partnership involves MoonPay acquiring a “sizable” stake in BCB Group, the companies said, stressing the arrangement does not fall within the category of M&A. Details of the deal between the two London-based firms were not disclosed.
Maintaining reputable and reliable banking relationships remains one of the big challenges facing crypto businesses. BCB Group, which has banking arrangements with U.K.-based ClearBank, provides accounts and payments processing for the likes of Bitstamp, Coinbase, Galaxy, Gemini, Huobi and Kraken.
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MoonPay provides an API that takes care of various know-your-customer and anti-fraud requirements for retail-facing businesses, creating crypto-to-fiat on- and off-ramps for 80 or so cryptocurrencies around the globe. In March of this year, MoonPay hired former Coinbase UK CEO Zeeshan Feroz as its chief growth officer.
“The two companies combined are actually a force to be reckoned with,” Feroz told CoinDesk in an interview, adding:
“MoonPay does that last mile of everything a business needs, and BCB sits behind that in terms of the payments and banking rails. Bringing the two businesses closer together, we could align a growth strategy that naturally benefits both businesses.”
BCB will continue to focus on the heavy lifting of banking infrastructure, while MoonPay brings expertise in highly scalable crypto-native payments processing, said BCB Group CEO Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie.
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“We’re specialists on the business-to-business side, and they’re specialists in business-to-consumer,” Landsberg-Sadie said in an interview. “But the depth of infrastructure that we’re both building is so closely aligned, that we’re now able to service that full B2B2C chain together.”
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