Bitcoin service provider Simplex received $7 million in Series A financing, with Bitmain participating in the investment

Simplex, an Israeli startup focused on buying Bitcoin with credit cards, recently announced that it has completed a $7 million Series A funding round.

Investors backing Simplex include bitcoin mining companies Bitmain and Cumberland Mining, crowdfunding platform FundersClub (which previously invested in Coinbase), and a group of angel investors, but Simplex declined to disclose their names.

Together with the $1.4 million raised previously, Simplex has raised a total of $8.4 million to date.

Simplex CEO Nimrod Lehavi said the company is looking to enable faster bitcoin purchases via credit cards while also reducing the impact of fraud on businesses such as exchanges or brokerage firms.

Lehavi told CoinDesk:

“We launched our product in beta about a year ago and we kept it low profile until we could offer a better service. We launched it to the world because we wanted to solve a very obvious and annoying problem: there is too much friction to buy Bitcoin.”

In the interview, Lehavi reiterated the company’s commitment to fraud mitigation, noting that its chief technology officer (CTO) Erez Shapira and CRO Netanel Kabala both previously worked on similar issues at PayPal.

Lehavi said Simplex’s merchant clients can benefit from using bitcoin as a payment method rather than wire transfers, and Simplex will also be able to cover transaction fees in the event of fraud or chargebacks.

“Even if there is a refund, we will still return the money to them,” he said.

The company began beta testing about a year ago, according to Lehavi, and its website counts cloud mining provider Genesis Mining and bitcoin exchanges Spectrocoin and Bits of Gold as clients.

Lehavi said:

“We selected some partners about a year ago, and so far we have successfully processed about $4 million in bitcoin exchange transactions and have been able to combat fraud very well.”

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/israeli-bitcoin-startup-raises-7m-in-series-a-round/
By Stan Higgins
Translator: Satuoxi
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/simplex-7m)