Moonpay In Talks To Acquire Coinbase Commerce Rival Helio

Multinational financial technology firm Moonpay is reportedly in talks to buy Helio as it looks to bolster its crypto service offerings. According to a scoop shared by Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett, the Helio deal is worth about $150 million. If successful, this will mark the largest acquisition made by the Miami-based firm since its inception.

Moonpay and Helio as the Power Duo

While much detail has not emerged regarding the terms of the deal, many in the ecosystem are already weighing the potential. Notably, Helio will enable Moonpay to compete directly with Coinbase Commerce as a self-service crypto payments outfit.

Helio enables content creators and ecommerce merchants to get paid for their products and services using crypto. Among the available products includes Solana Pay, the payments engine powering the DexScreener platform. As Terrett highlighted, the Solana Pay outfit is also integrated into Shopify.

🚨SCOOP: @FoxBusiness has learned that #crypto payment services provider @moonpay is in talks to acquire @helio_pay for an estimated $150 million. This would be MoonPay’s largest acquisition to date.

Helio is a Coinbase Commerce alternative providing a self-service crypto…

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) December 23, 2024

Moonpay occupies a unique role in the crypto ecosystem. It currently powers a lot of crypto payments services with an extensive partnerships record. As reported by Coingape in October, it landed a Venmo partnership to enable crypto access to 60 million users worldwide.

With crypto adoption growing, the need for more merchant integrations have grown considerably. Moonpay is among the infrastructure firms benefitting from these growth and Helio might help amplify this.

Growing Corporate Investments in Crypto

Since the victory of Donald Trump as president-elect last month, the corporate alignment has increased. Suddenly, companies are beginning to revamp their investment strategies in a bid to benefit from the potential incoming pro-crypto administration.

From Justin Sun investing $30 million into World Liberty Financial to Tether’s latest $775 million investment in Rumble, firms are largely diversifying their portfolios.

While M&A activities beyond the potential Moonpay deal might appear too formal, the presence of Bitcoin and Ethereum-based ETF products is removing entry barriers for firms.

BlackRock invests in IBIT, setting a precedent for state pension funds to also join the trend. Asset management firms are doubling down on other crypto ETF products to grant firms more access to gain exposure to the crypto industry.