Report: Blockchain Payments Firm Roxe Close to $3.6B SPAC Merger

Roxe Holdings, a blockchain-based payment company, is close to going public with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger, according to a Reuters report Tuesday (June 21) that cited sources familiar with the matter.

The company is looking at merging with Goldenstone Acquisition for a combined valuation of $3.65 billion.

The deal will buck an unfavorable market environment in which crypto has been losing value and investors have lost interest in a lot of SPAC cases, due to a long trend of disappointing returns.

Roxe’s services connect banks, payment firms and remittance companies, helping to facilitate cross-border payments with private blockchain tokens. It doesn’t make use of cryptocurrencies due to the volatility.

With the proposed deal, Roxe’s investors don’t plan to sell any of their stakes. The investors are also entitled to an earnout for additional shares in the combined company, if certain stock price targets are met.

This would be the second SPAC merger for Roxe founder Haohan Xu, who earlier this year agreed to take crypto exchange Apifiny public in a $530 million deal.

Both SPACs and crypto have taken somewhat of a fall from public graces lately, with bitcoin falling below $20,000 as of June 18 for the first time since last December, and having plummeted 60% this year so far.

Additionally, there have been around 600 SPACs that are public from the past few years that are still trying to complete deals, with 26 having been terminated in the U.S.

Last year, PYMNTS quoted Josh Li, Roxe chief business officer, when he said blockchain could be used with traditional finance to help with streamlining and hastening cross-border remittances.

Read more: Using Blockchain To Improve Cross-Border Remittances

According to Li, India was an important market for cross-border payments, due to its status as a “number one” company for inbound volume for the payments.

The company said at the time that it was working with IPAY to add the firm to its “node” system to allow for more cross-border remittance flows.