Israel-based secure bitcoin payments provider Simplex has raised $7 million in a Series A funding round, the firm has announced. The main investors in the round were bitcoin mining firms Bitmain and Cumberland Mining, with crowdfunding platform FundersClub also in the mix.
The startup was founded in 2014 by serial entrepreneur Nimrod Lehavi and two former PayPal anti-fraud experts, Erez Shapira and Netanel Kabala. The latest Series A funding round brought Simplex’s overall investments so far to $8.4 million, after it already raised $1.4 million before.
Lehavi is a board member at the Israeli Bitcoin Association and a co-founder of GeekCon, the annual “Un-conference for Hacking the Digital Lifestyle”. Explaining the service to Israeli media, Lehavi said: “Banks often place additional restrictions on which countries Bitcoin exchange customers can send wire transfers to. For example, it may be difficult for the average US resident to use a wire transfer to buy bitcoins from countries outside of the US like Slovenia, Hong Kong or China.
This clearly creates very high friction and makes mainstream adoption of bitcoin far from easy. “With Simplex, transactions are convenient, carry less restrictions, and occur almost instantaneously. Bitcoin buyers can use Simplex’s checkout page on Bitcoin exchanges, broker websites, and wallet applications, then proceed with their purchases, as they would on any e-commerce site.”
