Bitcoin company Coinify acquires Coinzone, copies Bitnet business model

Danish Bitcoin company Coinify announced the acquisition of Coinzone. Previously, the two companies have been competitors in the European Bitcoin market. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Amsterdam, Coinzone is a company that provides payment processing services, with most of its transaction volume in Eastern Europe.

The acquisition has expanded Coinify’s customer base from 8,000 monthly customers to 10,000 monthly active customers. In addition, with the addition of Coinzone sales staff, the company’s staff has increased to 17 people.

Coinify CFO克里斯蒂安•维斯提•拉森explained why his company wanted to acquire Coinzone, saying that the company now wants to shift its focus from acquiring individual merchants to acquiring payment service providers (PSPs). This was inspired by the US Bitcoin company Bitnet, and in the future the company will seek to cooperate with larger payment providers and directly acquire customers from these payment providers.

Larsen told CoinDesk:

“Today, many merchants work with PSPs (payment service providers) and are willing to have more payment options. Most of Coinzone’s partners have Bitcoin payment requirements, so our two companies are a perfect match in this regard.”

Larsen cited the success of this model in the United States, such as Cardinal Commerce, PayPal and Stripe have integrated Bitcoin payments. Therefore, he believes that now is the time to introduce this model to the European market and said that Coinify is in commercial negotiations with eight PSPs in the region.

Outgoing Coinzone CEO曼努埃尔•海尔曼told CoinDesk that his company’s existing management will remain in place during a “transition period,” but no executives will join Coinify full-time. Heilmann said he will return to the e-commerce industry but will continue to promote bitcoin technology.