January 11 (SeeNews) - Romanian blockchain platform Elrond said on Tuesday it has acquired Portuguese cryptocurrency payment solutions provider Utrust for an undisclosed sum.
By acquiring Utrust, Elrond aims to make payments faster, cheaper and more secure by using Internet-scale blockchain technology and also transform payment processing services from a cost for merchants into an income stream, Elrond said in a press release.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
Elrond and Utrust aim to first make payments fully natively digital by using blockchain to offer near-instant and secure global settlements at a trivial cost, accessible to merchants worldwide, and second, to bring powerful Decentralized Finance (DeFi) mechanics into play to create a paradigm shift via Merchant Yield products.
"At their best, payments should happen near-instantly, globally, and at a trivial cost. Enabling this for merchants worldwide is our primary goal. The second product we will be working on together with the newest member of the Elrond family is Merchant Yield, a Web3 payment processing solution that will provide yield for merchants, instead of requiring them to pay a percentage of the transacted value," Elrond Network CEO Beniamin Mincu said.
Elrond was co-founded in late 2017 by brothers Beniamin and Lucian Mincu alongside Lucian Todea. The company is headquartered in Malta and has a development team in Sibiu, central Romania.
Established in 2017, Lisbon-based Utrust provides cryptocurrency payment solutions designed to modernize the financial and payments industry and solve problems of traditional payment methods by enabling immediate transactions, buyer protection, and instant settlements for merchants.