Payments Company Bolt to Buy Wyre for $1.5B to Add Crypto Option

Bolt, a payments company providing one-click checkout services, agreed to buy Wyre Payments for $1.5 billion to add support for crypto transactions in one of the largest crypto-industry takeovers among those not involving a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The acquisition, expected to close later this year, would see the two firms power the industry's first one-click cryptocurrency checkout, Bolt announced Thursday.
Bolt, based in San Francisco, provides online checkout services and raised $355 million in January giving it an $11 billion valuation. Its one-click checkout is designed to allow its merchant clients to provide a fast and efficient user experience, similar to one that customers can experience on Amazon.
Wyre, also based in San Francisco, develops software to support blockchain-based payments. Last year it connected to the Visa network allowing users to move money between crypto and fiat currency.
The acquisition will allow Bolt's retailers to accept crypto as payment for goods and services as well allowing for the purchase of non-fungible tokens (NFT) through Bolt using Wyre's APIs, or application programming interfaces.
The integration of a crypto payment option has been in Bolt's plans for several years.
"When I wrote the draft business plan for Bolt, I had always imagined cryptocurrency at its center," founder and Executive Chairman Ryan Breslow said in the statement. That was in 2015.
The price is larger than the $1.2 billion Galaxy Digital agreed to pay for crypto custodian BitGo in May of last year.
The takeover was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

UPDATE (April 7, 11:03 UTC): Adds background on Bolt, previous record acquisition; changes source of news.

UPDATE (April 7, 11:36 UTC): Rewrites first paragraph; adds detail on companies' businesses, quote from Bolt founder.

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Jamie Crawley

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