MoonPay agrees to acquire North Capital in $60 million-plus deal for regulated securities infrastructure
The all-stock transaction gives the crypto payments company a stack of SEC-registered licenses — including broker-dealers, an alternative trading system and a transfer agent — that it says will underpin tokenized real-world assets and private securities.
MoonPay announced on September 23 that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire North Capital Investment Technology in an all-stock deal the companies valued at more than $60 million. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval, and North Capital would become a wholly owned subsidiary of MoonPay upon closing.
North Capital brings a set of SEC-registered licenses that are difficult and time-consuming to obtain from scratch: broker-dealer registrations, an alternative trading system called PPEX ATS, a transfer agent and a registered investment adviser. MoonPay, which has built its business primarily around crypto-to-fiat payment rails, said the acquisition gives it a regulatory foundation for issuing, custodying and enabling secondary trading of tokenized real-world assets and private securities.
The deal is the latest instance of a crypto-native payments or exchange company buying its way into securities-law compliance rather than building it independently, a pattern that has accelerated as tokenization of stocks, funds and other traditional assets has moved from a niche pitch to a contested product category among both crypto firms and incumbent brokerages.
Neither company disclosed a specific closing timeline. As with any acquisition of this kind, completion depends on the relevant regulatory approvals being granted, and the combined entity's ability to actually launch tokenized-securities products will depend on how regulators treat that activity under existing broker-dealer and transfer-agent rules once the deal closes.