A Bitcoin payments processor for the gaming industry has raised $35 million in funding.
US-based ZEBEDEE, led by Simon Cowell – not the music mogul – has won backing from Kingsway Capital, global merchant bank The Raine Group and videogame giant Square Enix in the Series B round.
Existing investors including Lakestar and Initial Capital also participated in the round.
ZEBEDEE says it has created a platform that allows any game developer to easily add programmable money into their games. Anything that happens in a game can trigger a payment, which is sent instantly and at nearly zero cost.
When a player shoots someone in a competitive CS:GO match (pictured), they can take a small amount of money (e.g. a fraction of a cent) from them in real-time inside the match itself. When a character in a platform game jumps and picks up a coin – as in Super Mario – that coin can be worth real money, which the player receives instantly and can also spend instantly.
ZEBEDEE offers both API-based tools for developers as well as an app for gamers, which enables them to discover the growing range of ZEBEDEE-powered games and acts as the wallet for sending and receiving funds between games and players.
To make this work from a technical standpoint, ZEBEDEE uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network as a key piece of its payments infrastructure.
The company’s user count has increased by over 10x since the startup announced its Series A round in September 2021. It has a growing number of partnerships both with game studios and notable finance industry players.
“We are pleased to be in a position where we can confidently scale our team and grow our business even as the macroeconomic backdrop becomes increasingly uncertain,” said CEO Cowell.
“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.”
Afonso Campos, managing partner at Kingsway Capital, said: “We are excited to lead ZEBEDEE’s latest funding round and support their continuing mission to become the Bitcoin enabler of choice for their partners.
“Partnering with ZEBEDEE will allow its entire ecosystem to benefit from higher user retention, lower transaction costs and generally a superior payments experience. Importantly, it will also help bring Bitcoin to millions around the globe.”