Bolt Has Reportedly Acquired Payment Startup Wyre for $1.5 Billion

Vignesh Karunanidhi
Bolt Has Reportedly Acquired Payment Startup Wyre for $1.5 Billion
Source: WSJ

A financial payment-focused company, Bolt is reportedly acquiring crypto payment startup, Wyre for $1.5 billion.

Bolt is a payment company that Ryan Breslow founded in 2014. The company was focusing primarily on providing one-click checkout services. The firm had raised almost $1.3 billion in VC and has a valuation of around $11 billion. The firm is based in San Francisco.

Wyre, which also emerges from San Francisco, builds software that supports blockchain-powered payments.

The acquisition is one of the biggest among those that don’t involve any special purpose acquisition company.

“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.

Bolt and Wyre to take over the payment sector

The acquisition is foreseen to close later in 2022. The joint attempt to take over the payment sector is amidst the growing demand for the purchase of goods and services with crypto and the opportunity of web3.

Bolt and Wyre envision building a better experience to secure crypto payments for millions of people.

The purchase will extend the capabilities of Bolt’s CheckoutOS—one-click checkout, authentication, payments, and fraud protection—to the bitcoin ecosystem once completed.

Bolt and Wyre intend to conclude the transaction and fully integrate before the end of the year.

Bolt will team up with Wyre’s ground-breaking crypto infrastructure to securely convert cryptocurrency to fiat, allowing retailers to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method while maintaining the security and convenience of traditional currency.

Wyre will also assist Bolt in developing its extensive API offering by integrating Wyre’s unique crypto stack. This will allow the developers to utilize the top blockchain protocols to build and develop products that can scale globally.

With the popularity of cryptocurrencies skyrocketing, customers are looking for simple ways to use, store and convert them. Wyre and Bolt’s collaboration will probably make this task easier.