Elrond Acquires Online Payments Processor Twispay, Secures E-Money License

Key takeaways:

• Enterprise-oriented blockchain platform Elrond received approval from the Romanian central bank to buy Twispay, a regulated electronic money company
• As a part of the deal, Elrond has secured an e-money license, meaning the company could issue regulated stablecoins in the EEA in the future
• Elrond will enhance Twispay’s existing payments infrastructure with blockchain technology to boost settlement times and increase stability

Elrond expands its payments infrastructure with the acquisition of EEA-regulated e-money firm Twispay

Elrond, a highly scalable blockchain platform for distributed apps designed for fast and low-cost transactions, has received a green light from the Romanian central bank to acquire Twispay, a principal member of Visa and Mastercard and a regulated issuer of electronic money.

E-money, short for electronic money, is a digital alternative to cash first proposed as a concept in the early 1980s. In recent years, the electronic monetary medium has become immensely popular. According to data analytics platform Statista, more than 6.1 billion e-money transactions have been made in the EU in 2020 alone.

With the acquisition of Twispay, Elrond is looking to complement the popular payments rail with blockchain technology to boost settlement times and increase the transparency and reliability of transactions. As a regulated European Economic Area (EEA) payments firm, Twispay is able to operate in all EU member states as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.

The founder and CEO of Elrond, Beniamin Mincu, said that the National Bank of Romania made a “landmark” decision by approving the acquisition of Twispay:

“This landmark decision from the Romanian Central Bank opens the door for EU citizens, and soon for everyone everywhere, to significantly benefit from value flowing with near-instant settlement times, at 100x fewer costs, with full transparency, and higher reliability.”

By integrating Twispay into its broader network, Elrond will be able to issue regulated stablecoins, crypto-oriented debit cards, and explore possible use cases within the confines of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

In January, Elrond bought Utrust, a Web3 payments company, to improve on the existing e-commerce payments solutions and introduced innovative Merchant Yield products. 

Elrond's native token EGLD has remained relatively unphased by the news of the Twispay acquisition. At press time, EGLD was trading at $142.71, down 1.9% for the day, which was good for a $3.08 billion market valuation.