BitPay Is Raising A $30M Series B to Expand, Add New Cryptocurrencies

BitPay series B

Blockchain payments technology platform BitPay is raising a $30 million Series B funding round led by Aquiline Technology Growth, a fund managed by private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners. BitPay CEO Stephen Pair says additional investors to the round are undecided as of yet, but that the round is oversubscribed and will likely close before the end of the year.

The Series B will bring BitPay’s total outside funding to $62.7 million following a $30 million Series A in 2014, with investors in that round including Index Ventures, Founder’s Fund, and Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic. This is Aquiline Capital Partner’s first investment ever in a blockchain services company.

BitPay, which is based in Atlanta with offices in Argentina and Amsterdam, builds technologies for consumers to spend and save bitcoin, and for businesses to accept it as payment. Their products include a platform for spending and accepting the cryptocurrency, a bitcoin wallet, and a bitcoin debit card.

Pair says the funding and new partnerships will help the company manage the rapid user growth they’re seeing. Bitcoin reached a record high today of over $13,000, propelling the total market cap to $220 billion. The number of consumers buying bitcoin — and potentially using it to purchase goods and services — continues to grow. Pair says BitPay’s revenue and transaction volumes are roughly quadruple this year over last — in 2017, they saw about $2 billion in annualized payment volumes.

“As a company, we’ve achieved very substantial growth on every metric over the course of the last couple of years. With the market being such that it is, we felt it was a good time from a market perspective to seek bringing in another partner,” says Pair.

The company will focus on shoring up their customer support capabilities, which Pair says have always been “excellent”.bitpay stephen pair

“That’s probably been a key differentiator from our competitors which has allowed us to be so successful,” says Pair. “But as we’ve seen the recent surge in new accounts, new customers, we’ve struggled with being honest in keeping up with our customer service obligations.”

BitPay is also planning on adding additional blockchains to their repertoire. By next year, Pair says they will natively support 4-5 additional blockchains, determining which ones by their ability to enable payments and by market cap size. They plan to add their first new cryptocurrency in the next two months. This will help consumers who are moving towards other cryptocurrencies in order to avoid bitcoin’s current high transaction fees.

To meet their ambitious goals, BitPay is hiring — Pair says they intend to double their current team of 30 in Atlanta next year, strengthen their development office in Argentina, and add to customer service and sales in Amsterdam and Silicon Valley.