Israeli bitcoin payment company Simplex has closed a $7 million Series A financing round with the participation of angel investors and companies in the bitcoin ecosystem, such as Bitmain and Cumberland.
Founded by serial entrepreneur CEO Nimrod Lehavi and two PayPal veterans, Erez Shapira and Netanel Kabala, the company has raised $8.4 million to date, including the most recent financing round. Simplex says it has already processed over $3.5 million in transactions since going live in beta a year ago and now plans a full launch.
The firm is hoping to bring bitcoin purchasing into the mainstream through an API that makes it easy and risk-free for exchanges, brokers and wallets to add a credit card payment option on their checkout pages and process consumer purchases.
Simplex offers an alternative to the most common method of payment for bitcoin purchases - wire transfers to exchanges, which can take up to three days and entail KYC requirements by banks, including providing explanations for purchases as well as copies of IDs.
Lehavi said, "Banks often place additional restrictions on which countries Bitcoin exchange customers can send wire transfers to. For example, it may be difficult for the average US resident to use a wire transfer to buy bitcoins from countries outside of the US like Slovenia, Hong Kong or China. This clearly creates very high friction and makes mainstream adoption of bitcoin far from easy."
He added, "With Simplex, transactions are convenient, carry less restrictions, and occur almost instantaneously. Bitcoin buyers can use Simplex’s checkout page on Bitcoin exchanges, broker websites, and wallet applications, then proceed with their purchases, as they would on any e-commerce site."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 7, 2016
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