Bitcoin Payments Pioneer BitPay Raises Record $30M in Series A Led by Index Ventures

BitPay, the world leader in business solutions for Bitcoin digital currency, today announces a Series A funding round of $30M (€22M), led by Index Ventures, with participation from Horizons Ventures, Founders Fund, Felicis Ventures, RRE Ventures, TTV Capital, Sir Richard Branson, and AME Cloud Ventures.

With total accumulated investment reaching $32.7M, BitPay has now raised more venture funding than any other bitcoin startup. This fundraising round includes powerful venture capital from London, Geneva, New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong. Jan Hammer from Index Ventures will be joining BitPay’s Board of Directors, along with Mr. Jimmy Furland who represents the original investor group.

BitPay now processes $1 million per day in bitcoin payments for over 30,000 merchants, 50% of whom are in the U.S., with 30% in Europe and 20% across the rest of the world. Its customers include WordPress, TigerDirect, and Shopify. Sir Richard Branson’s commercial space travel company Virgin Galactic also uses BitPay to accept payments in bitcoins. In addition to BitPay’s core merchant acquiring products, the company is also developing open source projects around Bitcoin such as Bitcore, Insight, and Copay.

The company plans to use the investment to expand globally and create around 70 jobs, primarily software developers. This will more than triple the company’s workforce across its teams in Atlanta, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Amsterdam. Mr. Stephen Pair has also moved to the position of CEO and Mr. Tony Gallippi is now Executive Chairman, creating openings for additional executive level positions and ensuring that developers are well represented among the company’s leadership.

“Bitcoin is a borderless and frictionless payment system, which is nearing a tipping-point moment in terms of merchant adoption,” said BitPay co-founder Tony Gallippi.

“Unlike existing payment technologies such as credit cards, with their high fees and risk of fraud and chargebacks, Bitcoin was designed for the Internet age, offering companies a lower-cost, lower-risk alternative.”

Index Ventures Partner Jan Hammer added:

“Bitcoin has emerged as the Internet’s payment system of choice and is now a core building block of the future global economy. By enabling thousands of merchants to accept payment in bitcoins quickly, safely and seamlessly, BitPay is already the proven and trusted winner in this space. Tony, Stephen and the team have achieved a fantastic amount with scant resources, and the combination of the huge market opportunity, the quality of the talent and this fresh injection of capital, will surely propel them to success on a global scale.”

“We are active in the Atlanta community focused on innovative financial services technology and believe the financial industry is the foundation of all commerce,” said Gardiner Garrard, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, TTV Capital.

“We see BitPay playing a key role in the future of electronic payments and paving the path for digital currency bitcoin.”

About BitPay

BitPay is a Payment Service Provider (PSP) specializing in e-commerce, B2B and enterprise solutions for the Bitcoin digital currency.

BitPay: http://www.bitpay.com/

About Index Ventures

Index Ventures is a multi-stage international venture capital firm based in London, San Francisco and Geneva. Since 1996, Index has teamed up with exceptional entrepreneurs in more than 20 countries, who are using technology to reshape the world around us. The companies they’ve started include Adyen, ASOS, Climate Corp, Criteo, Dropbox, Etsy, Hortonworks, Just Eat, King, Moleskine, Nasty Gal, Ozon, Pure Storage, Skype, SoundCloud, Sonos, Supercell, Transferwise and Wealthfront.

Index Ventures: http://www.indexventures.com/