Gaming industry payment processor Zebedee raised $35 million in a Series B funding round that will go towards expanding its infrastructure, tools and services for its bitcoin-based system.
The funding round was led by Kingsway Capital with participation by The Raine Group and Square Enix as well as existing backers Lakestar and Initial Capital.
Zebedee’s platform enables game developers to add programmable money into their games, allowing anything that happens in a game to trigger a payment, which is then sent instantly and at close to no cost, according to a press release on Tuesday (July 19). Players receiving money can also spend the funds instantly.
See also: Zebedee CTO Sees Bitcoin as the Universal Currency of the Metaverses
Simon Cowell, Zebedee co-founder and CEO, said that the company is in a position where it can scale and grow “even as the macroeconomic backdrop becomes increasingly uncertain.”
“This funding round gives us the ability to meet our highly ambitious roadmap both in terms of building out our infrastructure to support the hundreds of millions of users that play our partners’ games, as well as hire the top-level talent needed to ensure every partner has the best possible experience working with Zebedee.”
Headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, and founded in 2019, Zebedee offers both API-based tools for developers as well as an app for gamers and acts as the wallet for sending and receiving funds between games and players.
The platform uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network as a central component of its payments infrastructure but maintains that bitcoin is just the payment rail that enables the transfers, per the release.
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“For Zebedee users, it is not about bitcoin, nor should it be. It is about a more rewarding experience in games, packaged into intuitive and simple UX [user experience] that does not require any knowledge of crypto.”
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