Crypto Payments Startup Ramp Closes $52.7M Raise
Ramp, the payments infrastructure crypto startup, has closed a $52.7 million Series A raise led by Balderton Capital.
Existing backers NFX, Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, Firstminute Capital, and angel investors such as Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus and TrueLayer’s Francesco Simoneschi also participated. Balderton general partner Rana Yared has joined Ramp’s board.
Founded in 2017, Ramp offers a non-custodial payment infrastructure that helps exchanges, marketplaces, and wallets to offer smoother paths to buying crypto and other digital assets, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It styles itself as the ‘PayPal for crypto.’
Yared said in a statement that the Ramp team is “providing a reliable way in for new audiences by making buying digital assets as straightforward as buying US dollars when making a purchase from your favorite American brand in Euros.”
The Series A close comes barely six months after Ramp’s $9 million seed raise in June. The company said it has seen monthly transaction volumes grow by a factor of 30 times in the past 12 months while tripling the size of its team.
Partnering up
The latest influx of cash will be used to continue hiring and to drive new partnership deals.
Szymon Sypniewicz, Ramp’s co-founder and CEO, said the company is targeting partnerships in three key areas: mass-market consumer tech firms like Mozilla and Opera; NFT and gaming platforms like Sorare and Axie Infinity; and crypto platforms.
“More broadly, the market opportunity for us is really with the advent of web3 — and we’re looking at partnerships, products and collaborations that will play a role in the mainstream adoption of decentralized applications,” he added.
The company is already partnered with more than 400 developers including well-known names like Mozilla, Dapper Labs, Aave and Sorare. It was added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s anti-money laundering register in July, and more recently has been handed approval from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to offer services in the United States.
