YORK and NEWCASTLE, England–A bitcoin company that just announced its first-ever relationship with a credit union has now announced the acquisition of a real-time Bitcoin payments application.
NYDIG, which last week announced it is partnering with Torrance, Calif.-based UNIFY Financial Credit Union to enable its members to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin, said it has acquired Botteplay to help it, as one person described it, “unlock the financial infrastructure of the future.”
Financial terms were not disclosed. NYDIG previously invested in Bottlepay during the company's seed funding round.
According to a statement announcing the acquisition, the companies said Bottlepay, which was established in 2019, set out to solve what founder Pete Cheyne called "the greatest unsolved problem in finance."
“By leveraging Bitcoin's Lightning Network, Bottlepay has broken down barriers to make global micropayments a reality,” the company said. “Previously, these small payments were uneconomical due to the high service fees charged on traditional payment rails. Users can send payments in Bitcoin or other currencies like pounds and euros instantly and without fees.”
The app is currently available only in the U.K. and Europe and offers multiple integrations with some of the world's largest social networks like Twitter and Discord, the companies said.
"When we set out to build Bottlepay, we wanted to unlock the financial infrastructure of the future," said Cheyne. "We believe we've done so in a way that will revolutionize the payments industry and make it more equitable for everyone from small businesses and creators to end consumers.”
Payments Integration
NYDIG said the acquisition will allow it to integrate Bottlepay's Lightning Network infrastructure into its existing full-stack Bitcoin platform.
"We believe that the next chapter of Bitcoin will be about Bitcoin – big B – the network," said Ross Stevens, founder and executive chairman of NYDIG, and Robert Gutmann, co-founder and CEO of NYDIG, in a joint statement. "The Bottlepay team has built world-class infrastructure for Lightning and Bitcoin payments, and they have done so with the same level of regulatory and compliance rigor that our customers expect from NYDIG today.”