pan-based e-commerce company Rakuten has acquired Bitcoin exchange Everybody’s Bitcoin in a $2.4m deal.
The acquisition will see Rakuten purchase all 5,100 of Everybody’s Bitcoin shares through its payments subsidiary Rakuiten Card.
Rakuten purchased the exchange as a way to support cryptocurrency payment services and will use Everybody’s Bitcoin as a way into the market. The company has also received a lot of support from its customers for the addition of crypto exchange capabilities.
Everybody’s Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency exchange platform which is hoping to register as an official crypto exchange and merged with Rakuten as a way to broaden its synergies.
A business improvement order was supplied to the company by the Kanto Local Finance Bureau in reference to its management control systems. The company was given an action plan to improve its anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing protocols.
Alongside this, Everybody’s Bitcoin was given orders to improve book management systems, user protection measures, system risk control, and the management of outsourcing of business operations.
In a company statement from Rakuten it said, “Rakuten Group decided to acquire everybody’s bitcoin shares so that it can realise the early registration as a cryptocurrency exchange and develop cryptocurrency services to customers by combining the know-how of everybody’s bitcoin as a cryptocurrency exchange, and the know-how of Rakuten Group as a provider of various financial services.”
Earlier in the year, Rakuten led the $20m Series C round of money transfer platform Azimo. Azimo helps consumers to send money across the globe, supporting transfers in more than 60 currencies and to over 195 countries including Nigeria, Columbia, Poland, Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines.
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