Paystand acquires Bitwage | Payments Dive

Dive Brief:

• Paystand, the business-to-business payments company, has acquired Bitwage, the cross-border, stablecoin-supported payments provider, for an undisclosed sum, according to a press release last Friday.
• With the Bitwage acquisition, Paystand aims to use stablecoins to settle transactions and exchange foreign currencies. So far, the company has processed more than $20 billion in payments volume for businesses globally, according to the release.
• The Santa Cruz, California-based company credited the Genius Act, a new U.S. law creating a regulatory framework for stablecoins, as well as other regulations in Hong Kong, Singapore and the European Union, with paving the way toward stablecoin integration into payments systems.

Dive Insight:

Paystand will begin merging Bitwage’s services into its offering for enterprise customers immediately, the company said. To start, the company will facilitate fiat currency interoperability and offer treasury controls in alignment with select corporate clients’ risk policies, per the press release.

“Stablecoins just crossed from crypto curiosity to regulated money movement,” Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond said in the release. “What’s been missing is an enterprise‑scale network to apply them to real‑economy use cases — supplier payments, trade, logistics, energy, and manufacturing.”

Almond contended that the business combination will allow the company to connect stablecoin rails to a $100‑trillion B2B ecosystem, with the automation that allows faster settlement, lower expense and programmable services, without more bank fees and complexity.

In 2022, Paystand made an earlier acquisition to expand business. It acquired Yaydoo, a Mexican company that provides accounts receivable management, cash flow management and other services. By buying the company, it aimed to create a B2B conglomerate providing payables, receivables and payments network services using a blockchain infrastructure.

In 2021, Paystand said it raised capital to fuel its growth, taking in $50 million from the California venture capital firm NewView Capital Management, the Japanese investment house SoftBank’s Opportunity Fund and the Australian investment firm King River Capital, among others.

The company has now raised $100 million to date, a spokesperson for the Paystand said.