SatoshiPay Prepares for IPO on London Stock Exchange’s AIM

News and Analysis
26.07.2018

Cryptocurrency nanopayment provider and processing service SatoshiPay has announced plans for an IPO on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM, a market for growth companies.

According to the company’s blog post, SatoshiPay has signed an agreement with Blue Star Capital (BSC), an AIM listed investing company (Symbol: LON:BLU), which grants BSC exclusivity over an all-share acquisition of SatoshiPay until October 2018 (see BSC announcement). If completed, this acquisition would result in a so-called reverse takeover (RTO) of SatoshiPay by BSC.

An RTO is a type of merger that private companies engage in to become publicly traded without going through an initial public offering (IPO). The public company (in this case BSC) acquires the entire issued share capital of the private company (SatoshiPay) using BSC shares, whilst simultaneously undertaking a fundraise. Once completed, the private company has effectively become a publicly traded company.

By listing on the AIM, SatoshiPay will have access to a liquid high-growth market, as well as institutional investors. It will also be one of the first blockchain businesses to do so in London. Utilising the Stellar protocol allows the project to facilitate digital micropayments for online content, providing a login-free, one-click nanopayment ecosystem while taking advantage of Stellar’s fast transaction confirmation times and low fees.

Today SatoshiPay has also received a €566,000 pre-IPO cash injection from serial technology/crypto investor Daniel Masters. The company is already backed by Axel Springer, one of Europe’s biggest media houses, as well as specialised funds including the above mentioned Blue Star Capital, KR1 and experienced business angels such as Jim Mellon.

“We are delighted to receive our investment from someone who truly understands the crypto and payments arena. Danny Masters, along with our existing investors have recognised that there is a huge opportunity in blockchain-based micropayments, particularly in the field of digital media content where publishers have a need for a commercial solution,” SatoshiPay’s co-founder and CEO Meinhard Benn said in a statement.

Daniel Masters is currently Executive Chairman at CoinShares and at Global Advisors Holdings, a group which represents XBT Provider, issuer of Europe’s only publicly traded Bitcoin and Ether securities and is composed of the team responsible for GABI, a Jersey based, actively managed, Bitcoin investment strategy; and previously responsible for the Global Advisors Commodity Investment Fund and the Global Advisors Commodity Systematic Fund.

SatoshiPay offers two key services, a widget that online publishers can use to monetise their content and an Application Programming Interface (‘API’) for third parties, which allows businesses to build services on top of its technology, extending the market reach and revenue base. Its client widget automatically installs a wallet directly in a user’s browser and allows paid access to premium content. The same wallet can be used over multiple websites, without the need to create individual user accounts for different content providers. The credits can be used on any SatoshiPay-enabled website, app, or device.

“In essence internet users can think of SatoshiPay as a digital “pocket change” wallet for the web, they can pay small amounts (starting from as little as 1p), for web content like articles, blog posts, music, podcasts and videos,” Meinhard Benn added.

In the recent months the company has been busy hiring new team members in all departments: tech, product, growth, finance and support, as well as a number of new advisors, and now is approaching a total team size of 20 people. Recently SatoshiPay launched a number of product improvements and new features, including a simplified backup feature and improved platform stability while a “super-simple tipping function” is upcoming.

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