Jeff Cangialosi

Introduction

As someone building in the crypto payments space, it has been exciting to see the sector heat up and more acquisitions start to happening. After a ton of VC capital was poured into this vertical in 2021 and 2022, we are starting to see consolidation as traditional fintech players add crypto payment capabilities and bigger crypto-native players use acquisitions to enhance their product offerings.

MoonPay’s $175M acquisition of Helio is the latest chapter in this narrative. MoonPay has been around since 2019 and has primarily focused on solving the challenge of converting fiat into crypto whether that’s serving DeFi traders, NFT purchasers, or other merchants. They are one of the larger players in the crypto ecosystem, and like other large players, MoonPay has a venture arm that has allowed it to take bets throughout the crypto ecosystem.

I’m fairly familiar with Helio and their product offering, so here are a few thoughts on why I think MoonPay purchased Helio.

Why Moonpay acquired Helio

(1) Vertical integration (adding on-chain payment orchestration)

As noted above, MoonPay has focused on the movement of funds into and out of crypto. Helio allows MoonPay to offer a more robust payment offering once users have funds on chain. Helio’s checkout solution is designed for merchants that want to accept cryptocurrencies, giving them an out-of-the-box UI or a set of APIs that make it easy for a merchant to start accepting crypto just as they would a credit card or ACH payment. This on-chain checkout experience had been somewhat of a missing piece for Moonpay, and it was an area where their product lagged behind players like Coinbase Commerce (or Loop Crypto 😉).

(2) Access to product integrations

To Helio’s credit, they have done a great job building out integrations with leading commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce (integrations that Coinbase Commerce has). While it’s unclear how much crypto payment volume is on those platforms today, when you zoom out a few years, we’re likely to see a massive increase in stablecoin payment volume. Merchants are just starting to wake up to the potential to use stablecoins to unclock access to payments from international customers. Helio has done the groundwork to build several key integrations, and I would imagine this will be a focus going forward.

(3) Deepen ties to the Solana ecosystem

Helio’s origins lie on Solana. They began originally as one of the few payment gateways available for payments on Solana and over time they branched out to EVM chains and Bitcoin. The stablecoin payment narrative on Solana is stronger than ever, and the ecosystem has really taken off over the last year. I would imagine this acquisition helps MoonPay embed itself more fully as a core player on Solana.

(4) Push into Europe

Another piece of MoonPay news from last week is that they secured their MiCA approval, which allows them to continue offering their on and off ramp services in Europe. As a Miami-based company, it seems Moonpay is looking to build its ability to operate internationally, particularly in Europe. Helio is headquartered in the UK, and it appears most of their team is there. Given the regulatory uncertainty in the US over the last couple years, Europe has emerged as the leading market when it comes to crypto regulation and defining compliance standards around payments. Helio will certainly help Moonpay expand deeper into the European market.

(5) Talent acquisition

Finally, MoonPay is picking up a talented team of builders. Stijn and Jim previously worked in mobile and cloud security infrastructure where they had an exit. Finding experienced technical talent and industry knowledge in the payments space is not easy, so I imagine a driver of this all equity deal is that MoonPay wanted to bring on the Helio team to quickly ramp up its own internal resources.

Conclusion

Those are my quick thoughts on the acquisition. A major congratulations to the Helio team. Building in the crypto payments space over the last 3 years has not been easy, so kudos to them for building great traction and achieving a sizable exit.