MoonPay has acquired crypto infrastructure startup Glide and built-in Glide’s deposit and routing expertise, the businesses mentioned in a joint announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Thursday.
MoonPay, a monetary expertise platform that gives fiat-to-cryptocurrency fee companies, mentioned the deal is a part of MoonPay’s broader efforts to change into a digital asset infrastructure supplier, including capabilities past its authentic cryptocurrency funds enterprise.
Glide was based in 2023 by Tushar Soni and Qinyu Tong, former members of the Robinhood Pockets crew. The corporate was based to assist functions settle for deposits from quite a lot of tokens, wallets, exchanges, and fee sources. In accordance with the platform documentation, Glide helps over 100 tokens throughout 30 blockchain networks.
Glide goals to take away friction from crypto deposits
Soni and Tong based Glide to unravel a recurring downside they noticed whereas working with the Web3 client startup: customers struggling to fund their wallets, Soni advised Cointelegraph.
“Funds had been sitting on the improper chain, improper token, trade or card, and each deposit meant a bridge, swap or drop-off,” he mentioned.
The co-founders of Glide met at Robinhood, the place they collaborated on the event of Robinhood Pockets. “We joined Y Combinator with a plan to construct a pockets infrastructure for Web3 client startups, however by working with these startups, we discovered that customers had been having a tough time getting cash into their wallets,” Soni mentioned.
Mr. Qinyu Tong (left) and Mr. Tushar Soni. sauce: Y combinator
Glide finally shifted its focus from its pockets infrastructure to constructing an built-in deposit movement that enables customers to deposit funds into their wallets from totally different chains, tokens, wallets, exchanges, or playing cards with out having to manually full bridges or swaps.
MoonPay strikes deeper into digital asset infrastructure
Following the acquisition, Glide’s expertise shall be built-in into MoonPay Deposit, a product already utilized in functions resembling Telegram’s Pockets, Moonshot, and Paysafe.
MoonPay CEO and co-founder Ivan Soto-Wright advised Cointelegraph that the acquisition suits into the corporate’s broader infrastructure technique, following latest offers in safety, buying and selling, and accounting capabilities.
“Each acquisition this yr has added a layer of infrastructure that companies and their customers must function their digital belongings: transferring, securing, buying and selling and accounting for cash,” Sotorite mentioned.
He added that Glide addresses one of many largest ache factors in crypto transfers: customers dropping funds by sending the improper token to the improper chain, and predicted that future blockchain-based platforms will want infrastructure that hides these complexities.
MoonPay didn’t disclose monetary phrases of the Glide acquisition.
This deal marks MoonPay’s sixth acquisition announcement in 2026, as MoonPay continues to develop its digital asset infrastructure stack by way of acquisitions resembling Sodot, First rate, DFlow, Entender, and Daybreak Labs.
In accordance with startup information platform Tracxn, its buyers embrace Thrive Capital, Paradigm, Valhalla Ventures, Tiger World Administration and Coatue.
Caroline Pham, a former appearing chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee, was named chief authorized officer and chief administrative officer late final yr.
