MoonPay Agrees to Buy North Capital in Tokenized-Securities Expansion

MoonPay has entered a definitive merger agreement to acquire North Capital Investment Technology, a private-markets infrastructure provider whose businesses include SEC-registered broker-dealers, an alternative trading system, a transfer agent and an investment adviser. The September 23 announcement positions MoonPay to add regulated infrastructure for private and tokenized securities as it pursues tokenized real-world assets and onchain capital markets.

The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. If completed, North Capital will become a wholly owned MoonPay subsidiary, according to MoonPay’s announcement.

MoonPay’s proposed acquisition

MoonPay did not disclose the financial terms of its agreement. Cointelegraph, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that the transaction is an all-stock deal valued at more than $60 million. That valuation has not been confirmed in MoonPay’s public announcement.

The distinction matters because the deal is still proposed, rather than a completed integration of North Capital’s operations. The disclosed agreement gives MoonPay a route to acquire an established set of private-market functions, but the parties must first satisfy the conditions attached to closing.

For MoonPay, the proposed acquisition extends beyond the payment and access services commonly associated with crypto platforms. The target’s businesses span the process through which private securities can be issued, administered and traded, including capital raising, clearing, custody, investor onboarding, escrow and secondary trading.

North Capital’s private-securities stack

North Capital says it provides infrastructure for exempt and tokenized securities. Under the proposed acquisition, its SEC-registered broker-dealers, alternative trading system, transfer agent and investment adviser would be added to MoonPay’s financial infrastructure platform.

MoonPay identified those regulated businesses as supporting its expansion into tokenized real-world assets and onchain capital markets.

Official MoonPay announcement image for its proposed acquisition of North Capital. — Source: MoonPay

PPEX’s secondary-market scale

North Capital’s PPEX trading page describes PPEX as its SEC-registered alternative trading system for secondary trading in private securities, including digital and tokenized instruments, and lists more than 1,250 approved assets and 625,000 secondary trades. MoonPay said North Capital’s broader platform has processed more than $8.7 billion in primary and secondary transaction volume, a figure covering activity across the platform rather than only the PPEX secondary venue. MoonPay also said the proposed acquisition would add a secondary-market component alongside North Capital’s capital-raising, custody, clearing and onboarding services.

Tokenized-RWA strategy

Tokenization can place representations of financial or real-world assets on blockchain-based systems, but the acquisition announcement is focused on the regulated infrastructure surrounding securities rather than on a technical tokenization product. MoonPay’s description centres on combining North Capital’s private-markets capabilities with its own financial infrastructure platform.

That makes the proposed deal a move toward assembling rails for securities activity across an asset lifecycle: investor onboarding and capital raising on one side, followed by custody, recordkeeping and potential secondary trading on the other. North Capital’s existing focus on exempt and tokenized securities is particularly relevant to MoonPay’s stated onchain capital-markets ambitions.

Whether that strategy takes shape inside MoonPay will depend first on the transaction closing. For now, the clearest disclosed outcome is that MoonPay has agreed to acquire a regulated private-securities business whose PPEX platform spans more than 1,250 approved assets and whose wider infrastructure has handled more than $8.7 billion in transaction volume.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.