MoonPay acquires Meso to expand global payments push

MoonPay announced that it has acquired Meso, a startup specializing in bridging traditional finance and crypto, in a move designed to accelerate its transformation into a regulated global payments network.

The deal adds experienced leadership to MoonPay’s executive team while expanding its infrastructure to connect banks, card networks, stablecoins and blockchains under a unified compliance framework.

Meso, founded in 2022, was built by payments veterans Ali Aghareza and Ben Mills, whose prior roles at Braintree, Venmo and PayPal gave them experience in scaling consumer and enterprise financial systems.

MoonPay will integrate Meso’s leadership team, with CTO Aghareza stepping into the same role at the parent company, while Mills will oversee product strategy as senior vice president. Their appointments follow MoonPay’s earlier acquisitions of Solana-based payments app Helio and stablecoin infrastructure provider Iron, consolidating three critical pieces of the company’s strategy.

MoonPay, founded in 2019, first became known for offering fiat-to-crypto ramps, allowing users to buy and sell digital assets with mainstream payment methods. The company now services over 30 million customers and nearly 500 partner companies, positioning itself as a core provider of crypto infrastructure.

With Meso’s focus on self-custody and developer-friendly API integrations, MoonPay aims to provide businesses and consumers with a single, trusted way to transact across both fiat and digital currencies.

This is a developing story.

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This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor Jeffrey Albus before publication.

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