MoonPay Acquires Payments Infrastructure Firm Meso

MoonPay has acquired Meso, a payments infrastructure company, as the crypto on-ramp provider expands its vision beyond digital asset purchases toward becoming a comprehensive global payments network.

The acquisition, announced Tuesday in a statement, brings two payments industry veterans to MoonPay's leadership team. Ali Aghareza, Meso's co-founder and CTO, will serve as MoonPay's chief technology officer, while Ben Mills joins as Senior vice president of product to lead the company's global product organization.

Aghareza was part of the original engineering team at Braintree, which PayPal acquired, and later led engineering at PayPal before co-founding Meso in 2022. Mills brings experience from senior product roles at Braintree, Venmo, and Solana, having previously served as head of developer experience at Braintree and head of product at Venmo.

"We've built trusted ramps that brought millions into crypto, now we're building the global network that will move money across every form and in every market," said Ivan Soto-Wright, MoonPay's co-founder and CEO.

The deal positions MoonPay to expand beyond its core business of facilitating cryptocurrency purchases with traditional payment methods. The company aims to create unified infrastructure connecting banks, card networks, stablecoins, and blockchains under a single regulatory framework.

MoonPay operates under various licenses including Money Transmitter Licenses, BitLicenses, and MiCA approval in Europe. The acquisition of Meso, combined with previous acquisitions Helio and Iron, provides components for what the company describes as a comprehensive payments ecosystem.

Meso had positioned itself as infrastructure for fintech and crypto platforms seeking to integrate traditional and digital payment rails. The company's technology focused on bridging conventional financial systems with cryptocurrency networks.

The acquisition reflects broader consolidation trends in crypto payments as companies seek to build more comprehensive financial infrastructure. MoonPay's evolution from a crypto on-ramp service toward a full payments network mirrors similar strategic pivots across the fintech sector.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. MoonPay has raised significant venture funding to support its expansion, with the company previously valued at over $3 billion in private funding rounds.