NEM Ventures, the venture capital and investment arm of the NEM blockchain ecosystem, announced Thursday (Nov. 21) that it has made a strategic investment in Canadian cryptocurrency payments provider Cyclebit.
“Cyclebit is already an established player in the crypto and fiat payments space, and we are thrilled to make a strategic investment in this project at a time of major growth for the organization,” said Dave Hodgson, director and co-founder of NEM Ventures, in a press release. “With an existing global presence and the potential to help bring crypto to the mainstream, we are aligned in our vision to bring crypto to mass adoption.”
Cyclebit, which plans to expand into Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy and the United Arab Emirates in the coming months, provides tools so that retailers can accept cryptos and fiat for in-store, online and on-the-go purchases. The company has partnered with brick-and-mortar retailers to install point of sale (POS) terminals around the globe, with more than 200,000 POS terminals supporting millions of transactions per month.
In addition, the Cyclebit wallet will be released in early 2020, which will allow users to load their credit cards onto its platform and manage their funds via one wallet, while also keeping assets secure in cold storage. Cyclebit has enabled payments with NEM’s native cryptocurrency, XEM, since last year, and this new partnership will help support the growth of NEM’s Catapult technology before its launch in early 2020. It will also help scale the existing global service throughout North America.
“The upcoming Catapult launch will undoubtedly make waves in the industry, and we are excited to be partnering with NEM Ventures at this monumental time,” said Sameer Pirani, CEO of Cyclebit. “This investment makes it possible to continue scaling our POS terminals globally, and we can’t wait to continue diversifying our user base with a major industry player by our side.”