Payment Infrastructure Provider Merge Secures $9.5M in Seed Funding

London-based Web3.0 payment infrastructure services firm, Merge has raised $9.5 million in seed funding to develop the payment technology that will help bridge the gap between traditional firms and the crypto ecosystem. 

The company said its seed funding round was led by Octopus Ventures and included Hashed, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, and Ethereal Ventures, alongside angel investors which included some of the biggest names in both crypto and traditional finance; the founder of Aave, co-founder of Polygon, CEO of Ledger, and former CEO of Barclays Consumer Banking, amongst other prominent investors.

While a number of startups in the Web3.0 space finds it very difficult to access traditional financial services duo to its many limitations, Merge has designed a simple API that caters to this need. Effectively, the API Merge provides helps crypto and web3 companies with a range of banking and payments solutions enabling them to instantly create bank accounts, send payments and seamlessly convert funds between fiat and crypto.

“As the crypto economy moves further into the mainstream, it’s increasingly clear that the current financial infrastructure isn’t fit to serve the rapid expansion of crypto-native businesses and many providers aren’t specialised enough to gauge risk,” said Zihao Xu, an investor at Octopus Ventures,

“Merge’s vision is to build the infrastructure necessary to allow crypto businesses to operate without fear of shutdown by regulators or third-party risk teams. We’re excited to back them as they build that and, ultimately, unleash even more innovation in crypto and defi.”

Merge and the Founder’s Advantage

While Merge is not the only startup exploring solutions to the Web3.0 finance limitations, the platform has a very big headstart in that it is being championed by Kebbie Sebastian, a former PayPal, and Barclays executive, alongside former Coinbase and Luno executives.

The combined experiences of these professionals are a big boost for the firm and through it, will be able to meet investors’ expectations while generally delivering its targeted solution to users across the globe.

“Exponential growth of crypto startups evidently led to dramatic increase in CeFi and DeFi assets under management, giving us strong confidence in Merge as the infrastructure provider to those institutions. Institutional players will naturally seek a reliable compliance infrastructure, and Merge is the only one-stop solution that is specifically catering to their needs,” said Baek Kyoum Kim, partner at Hashed.