The global third-party payment giant PayPal has been providing cryptocurrency buying and selling services to US users since November, and predicts that it will provide 28 million stores around the world to accept encrypted payments next year; American Express is taking a stake in the white-hot cryptocurrency industry, investing in institutional trading platform FalconX.
FalconX announced Wednesday that American Express Ventures made the investment as an extension of a fundraise earlier this year, but did not disclose an amount.
In May, FalconX revealed that it had raised $17 million in a seed round led by Accel – which has stakes in Facebook and Slack. Coinbase Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Fenbushi Capital, and Avon Ventures also participated at the time.
Since the May round, FalconX said it has experienced revenue growth of 350% and transaction volumes have tripled to about $3 billion on a monthly basis. It now has 250 institutional clients.