Fintech Firm Bolt Acquires Crypto Startup Wyre for $1.5B

The acquisition is worth a whopping $1.5 billion, making it one of the largest in the sector that did not involve a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Crypto mergers and acquisitions have surged over the past year, and there has been $1.25 billion worth of deals done in the first quarter of 2022. This latest one will put activity on track to eclipse the $4.9 billion in crypto-related M&A in 2021, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Payments Firms Want Crypto

Bolt, founded in 2014, operates in the online-payments space with a “one-click checkout” service for merchants called “CheckoutOS.” The report added that the firm has had $1.3 billion in venture capital investments and was valued at around $11 billion.

Wyre provides services for retail and business customers to exchange currencies and crypto assets between banks and wallets and a digital asset trading platform.

Bolt and Wyre will be operating together to develop new payments channels for the mainstream, including cryptocurrencies. Wyre CEO Yanni Giannaros stated:

“Today, we’re making history and joining forces to reinvent the way that people interact with commerce and crypto … Simply put, we want to allow every retailer to transact easily in cryptocurrency, removing long-standing barriers.”

He added that the firm is committed to providing its partners and builders with the tools and infrastructure needed to “create powerful crypto experiences.”

Bolt founder Ryan Breslow added to the sentiment, stating, “when I wrote the draft business plan for Bolt, I had always imagined cryptocurrency at its center.”

The acquisition will also allow users to purchase NFTs through Bolt’s platform using Wyre APIs. Wyre is also used by Apple Pay which has recently moved into crypto payments through integration with MetaMask.

Last year, Wyre partnered with the Polygon Ethereum scaling protocol to provide a fiat-to-USDC on-ramp.

Strike and Shopify Team Up

In related payments news, Strike has partnered with e-commerce giant Shopify. The move will enable U.S. merchants to receive global payments in Bitcoin and cash out in USD.

Strike uses the Lightning Network for BTC payments, making transactions much faster and cheaper than native Bitcoin.

Speaking at the Miami Bitcoin event this week, Strike CEO Jack Mallers said that the payments processing industry has been stagnant for 50 years, and it was time to revolutionize it with crypto payments.