Payments giant PayPal is investing millions in Magic, the San Francisco-based crypto wallet company, in its latest venture into the digital asset space.
According to Magic’s press release, the wallet-as-a-service (WaaS) provider has raised $52 million in a strategic funding round led by PayPal Ventures.
According to Alan Du, partner at PayPal Ventures,
“Mass adoption of Web3 is a hot topic, and Magic is facilitating it with a simple and secure solution. discover Web3. We are proud to invest in Magic and are confident that the company will help increase the number of use cases for Web3 among global brands.”
The funding round also included investments from Cherubic, Synchrony, KX, Northzone and Volt Capital, bringing the total amount raised by Magic to $80 million, according to the release.
Magic, a 2018 tech startup, provides a non-custodial crypto wallet infrastructure for companies that want to give their customers a simple and secure Web3 experience.
The company uses a unique Software Development Kit (SDK) which is implemented to allow customers to instantly create wallets using their existing email, social media accounts or SMS. To date, Magic has created more than 20 million unique wallets, according to the release.
Current Magic customers include several branded companies, including Mattel, Macy’s, Xsolla, and Immutable.
Magic co-founder Sean Li said the funding will allow the company to expand its presence in the European Union (EU) and Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
says Li,
“With this new funding, we are focused on expanding functionality and growing use cases to continue to deliver more value to our customers. We also look forward to achieving deeper integration in the EU and APAC.”
Paypal’s recent filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that the company held approximately $604 million in digital assets, including $291 million in Bitcoin (BTC) and $250 million in Ethereum (ETH), in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Last December, they also announced a partnership with cryptocurrency firm ConsenSys to integrate PayPal with MetaMask, one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets in the world.
In April, PayPal-owned Venmo announced plans to allow its more than 70 million users to transfer cryptocurrency to other Venmo users, as well as move digital assets to wallets and external exchanges.
