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Crypto Payments Specialist Baanx Raises $20M Funding Round

The Series A investment round included Ledger, Tezos Foundation, Chiron and British Business Bank.

Group photo of the Baanx team
The Baanx team (Baanx)

Baanx, a cryptocurrency payments specialist authorized by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has raised a $20 million Series A funding round, the company said on Tuesday.

The investment round, which included Ledger, Tezos Foundation, Chiron and British Business Bank, brings the crypto payment enabler’s total funding to over $30 million. London-based Baanx, which runs the Ledger card product, recently signed a three-year partnership with Mastercard for the U.K. and Europe.

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Large legacy payments companies such as Mastercard and Visa have been quietly exploring things like payments on Ethereum, stablecoins and the Web3 world of non-custodial wallets – areas where Baanx provides seamless connectivity.

“Over the past 12 months, we have been building out a series of non-custodial, on-chain products, creating a whole new type of crypto payment,” Chief Commercial Officer Simon Jones said in an interview. “Allowing the user full control of their funds whilst enabling real-world spend, we hope to power the next generation of crypto payments.”

Jones said the funding will help the firm introduce its services in the U.S. and Latin America later this year. The company, which has over 150,000 users, also has a native BXX token.

CORRECTION (March 5, 12:33 UTC): Corrects name of investor to Tezos Foundation throughout. An earlier version said the investor was Tezos.

Ian Allison

Ian Allison is a senior reporter at CoinDesk, focused on institutional and enterprise adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Prior to that, he covered fintech for the International Business Times in London and Newsweek online. He won the State Street Data and Innovation journalist of the year award in 2017, and was runner up the following year. He also earned CoinDesk an honourable mention in the 2020 SABEW Best in Business awards. His November 2022 FTX scoop, which brought down the exchange and its boss Sam Bankman-Fried, won a Polk award, Loeb award and New York Press Club award. Ian graduated from the University of Edinburgh. He holds ETH.

Ian Allison