Fireblocks acquires stablecoin payments platform First Digital

Cryptocurrency custodial firm Fireblocks Inc. today announced that it has acquired First Digital, a payments technology company platform focused on stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies, in an effort to expand its services for the payments industry.

The deal follows Fireblocks’ $550 million Series E funding round in January that brought the company’s valuation up to $8 billion. Although the details of the deal have not been announced publicly, CoinTelegraph said it learned that the company reportedly paid $100 million.

Although retail payments are one of the growing categories of cryptocurrency payments globally, adoption has been slow for businesses because of high integration costs, cryptocurrency volatility and cumbersome regulations such as manual “Know Your Customer” and anti-money-laundering regulations.

Through this acquisition, Fireblocks will expand its suite of services to include support for payments business to business, business to customer and cross-border. It will also support the USDC stablecoin, Celo, as well as other cryptocurrencies by spring.

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that peg their value to another currency, for example the U.S. dollar, to stabilize their price. As a result, they are much easier to exchange for merchants and customers without the worry of volatility and are thus seen as better for everyday use.

“We’re pushing ‘fast forward’ to give payment service providers the suite of tools they need to begin accepting crypto payments,” said Michael Shalov, chief executive of Fireblocks.

First Digital was founded in 2017 and provides developer-driven stablecoin payment solutions that are easily implemented by merchants, who can quickly gain control over transactions, treasury management and compliance, including anti-money-laundering and Know Your Customer. Using the platform, merchants can quickly get on board with cryptocurrency payments through payment processors and simply add the option to their systems and have payments settled for local currency or crypto.

As part of the acquisition, First Digital’s engineering team will join Fireblocks’ engineering staff and add their own technical knowledge and expertise to the company’s growing tech ecosystem. Ran Goldi, chief executive of First Digital, has also been appointed vice president payments at Fireblocks as part of the deal.

“We believe that payments should be a core functionality for all fintech apps, and via Fireblocks’ platform, we will make it available to the world at scale,” Goldi said about the acquisition.

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