Billionaire fund manager Alan Howard backs the €12.8M funding round of UK bitcoin payments app Bottlepay

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Tyne, UK-based Bottlepay, an app that provides mobile payment, mobile banking, and financial services, has raised £11M (approx €12.8M) at a post-money valuation of £51M (approx €59.4M) in a Seed round of funding.

Investors

The round saw participation from a range of global investors including British fund manager Alan Howard, present and former Goldman Sachs partners, venture capital firm FinTech Collective, and financial services firm NYDIG and tech entrepreneur Phil Doye.

How will the funds be utilised?

Bottlepay’s payment system aims to give everyone access to an open payment network that allows people to send, spend and receive money anywhere in the world, in real-time.

With this raised capital, the company looks to expand its team, develop the platform’s functionality, and increase the international reach of its service over the coming year.

Over the last 12 months, Bottlepay has been aggressively hiring and has expanded the team by more than 200 per cent. This year it hopes to grow the team by a further 60 per cent.

Mark Webster, CEO of Bottlepay, says, “The payments ecosystem is undergoing monumental changes as we move towards a cashless society. Today’s consumer wants to be able to transact freely and easily, without the restrictions of a traditional bank. We believe that with this cash injection, we can build a leading company in this rapidly growing space which will allow people to send, spend and receive payments in a way that works best for them.”

What does Bottlepay do?

Bottlepay is headquartered in Tyne, England, and was co-founded by Peter Cheyne and Peter O’Donoghue in 2018. It facilitates instant payments, including micropayments, in conventional currencies and Bitcoin – which means users can pay, donate and tip with as little as a penny.

The platform’s open payment network aims to transform the digital economy by making digital micropayments and cross-border transactions feasible by reducing the excessive fees that usually come with the necessary payment rails.

Using Bottlepay’s system, any purchase that is immediately fulfilled – from coffees to digital content – can be made from anywhere in the world with instant payments using currencies or Bitcoin.

Bottlepay users can buy, store, send and withdraw Bitcoin with a single slide, unlike other digital payment platforms like PayPal and Revolut, whose users cannot currently spend or withdraw their Bitcoin.

Payment through social media

Bottlepay’s new mobile app enables people to send and receive money via a single tweet, message, or social media post on platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, and Discord. The company claims that its beta version of the app attracted over 20,000 users without any marketing, as it was rated as the number one Crunchbase Bitcoin startup globally.

Sean Lippel, Principal and Head of Digital Assets at FinTech Collective, says: “While nearly 65 million people own Bitcoin globally, only a small fraction of that number actually transact daily, meaning we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface on the broader payment use cases for Bitcoin as an open-source money network. We believe Bottlepay’s elegant and intuitive consumer interface, built strategically on top of the power of the Lightning Network, will unlock social, streaming, and micropayments for digital assets.”

Bottlepay Ltd is registered in the UK and is part of the FCA’s Innovation Hub and adheres to all the regulatory requirements in the regions it serves.

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