Merge (www.mergedup.com)wants to bring the banking and payment infrastructure into the Web3 economy. After the great excitement about web3 in 2021, more and more new start-ups are emerging to provide financial infrastructure. Merge is one of them. The FinTech was founded by Kebbie Sebastian, a former executive at PayPal and Barclays, and other former executives from Coinbase, and Luno. Merge secured $9.5 million in seed capital financing.
Octopus Ventures led the funding round, involving investors such as Hashed, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, and Ethereal Ventures. Other investors included the founder of Aave, the co-founder of Polygon, the CEO of Ledger and the former CEO of Barclays in consumer banking, and other angel investors.
Merge operates an API-based banking and payment platform that bridges the gap between fiat and crypto ecosystems.
As the crypto economy moves further and further into the mainstream, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current financial infrastructure is not suitable for the rapid expansion of crypto companies and many providers are not specialized enough to assess the risk,” said Zihao Xu, an investor at Octopus Ventures.
“Merge’s vision is to create the necessary infrastructure so that crypto companies can operate without fear of being shut down by regulators or third-party risk teams,” Kebbie Sebastian added.
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