London's Ramp ramps up the crypto payments infrastructure game with $52.7 million raise

London-based, but with deep roots in Poland, crypto payments infrastructure startup Ramp has raised $52.7 million in a Series A funding round. The platform provides developers with a non-custodial payment infrastructure that allows for the collection of digital assets from exchanges and then embedding them into other platforms. In plain English, Ramp is making crypto more useful and accepted at a wider range of locations.

This Series A raise arrives just six months since closing a $10.1 million seed round, and is now partnered with over 400 developers including Axie Infinity, Mozilla, Opera Browser, Dapper Labs, Aave, Argent, Trust Wallet, Zerion, and is the exclusive on-ramping partner to both Sorare, and Flow. Being a backend service provider, chances are the Ramp is never going to become a household name, but my guess is that it will be used to power a number of household names, both present, and future.

With its Ramp SDK, the startup is giving any brand or partner the ability to offer crypto-enabled services all within a few hours, in stark contrast to if a similar mechanism were built in-house and set up their own on-ramping stack. Adding to the crypto-joy, when multiple brands employ Ramp’s technology, there’s no need for consumers to enter the time-consuming verification process for each individual payment gateway. One Ramp, one verification, regardless of the outlet.

Founded in 2017, Ramp received approval from the UK’s FCA in July of this year, recently received the seal of approval from US FinCen - the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, enabling the company to legally operate in the US. and became the first on-ramping company to receive an open banking license from The Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) in 2020.

“There is so much potential in unlocking cryptocurrency and digital assets beyond today’s narrow and restrictive use cases,” commented co-founder and CEO Szymon Sypniewicz. “We’re on a mission to provide instant access to cryptocurrencies through a provider they can trust.”

Ramp’s $52.7 million Series A round was led by Balderton Capital with existing investors NFX, Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, and firstminute Capital following on. Likewise, angel investors Taavet Hinrikus (Wise) and Francesco Simoneschi (TrueLayer) also participating.

“We firmly believe that digital assets will create tectonic shifts, where this emerging technology will have a powerful impact across gaming, financial services, and how we own real assets. Szymon, Przemek and the team at Ramp are providing a reliable way in for new audiences by making buying digital assets as straightforward as buying US dollars when making a purchase from your favourite American brand in Euros,” commented Balderton’s Rana Yared. “They understand the need to reliably and sustainably create not just the building blocks for this new wave, but the entire infrastructure that will support it for decades to come. I’m excited to be joining the board and look forward to helping the team build this exciting future.”