MoonPay acquires Glide to expand its crypto deposit infrastructure

MoonPay acquires Glide to expand its crypto deposit infrastructure

MoonPay has acquired crypto infrastructure startup Glide, aiming to integrate Glide's deposit and routing technologies into its fiat to cryptocurrency exchange service. The two companies announced the deal this week and positioned it as a step in MoonPay's transformation from the payments space to a broader digital asset infrastructure that serves other applications.

Glide was founded in 2023 by Tushar Soni and Qinyu Tong to help software applications accept deposits from multiple token and wallet sources without requiring users to manually coordinate cross-chain bridges, redemptions and other intermediate steps. Glide's documentation shows that the platform supports more than 100 tokens on 30 blockchain networks.

Core Points

MoonPay is integrating Glide's deposit and routing capabilities into its MoonPay Deposits product. Glide's core value is to simplify the wallet recharge process across chains, tokens, exchanges and bank cards, eliminating the need for manual bridging and redemption operations. This acquisition strengthens MoonPay's strategy to expand from fiat to cryptocurrency payments into deeper infrastructure areas. MoonPay did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.

Glide's solution to cross-chain deposit friction

Soni said that while working with Web3 consumer startups, recurring problems contributed to Glide: users had difficulty adding funds to their wallets smoothly. In these workflows, balances may end up on the wrong chain, in the wrong token, or in the wrong place-forcing users to complete multiple steps to move funds where they are really needed.

Soni said: "Funds may stay on the wrong chain, in the wrong token, on the exchange or on the bank card, and every deposit means bridging, redemption and transfer out." According to Soni, the two founders met while co-developing Robinhood Wallet, before joining Y Combinator with plans to build wallet infrastructure for a Web3 consumer startup. But engagement with startups has made deposit issues more prominent, prompting Glide to shift from a universal wallet infrastructure to a unified deposit process.

From multiple sources to a single funding experience

Glide's model focuses on reducing the manual complexity often associated with deposits in a multi-chain ecosystem. Glide does not require users to plan their own path from one asset or chain to another, but aims to automate routing, allowing applications to recharge wallets from different sources, such as other chains, tokens, wallets, exchanges, or bankcard-based funds.

As Glide evolves, its goal has become clearer: to allow users to recharge without having to complete bridging and redemption operations themselves. This difference is significant for application developers because it shifts part of the user experience burden from end users to infrastructure logic that can be reused across products. Glide was founded in 2023 by Soni and Tong, both of whom previously worked on the Robinhood Wallet team. Their focus on the deposit process reflects a broader crypto trend: consumer-facing services increasingly rely on reliable entry and funding channels, rather than just token support or interfaces.

How MoonPay plans to use the technology

MoonPay said that after the acquisition is completed, Glide's technology will be integrated into MoonPay Deposits. According to the shared announcement, MoonPay Deposits has been used by apps including Wallet, Moonshot and Paysafe in Telegram. MoonPay CEO and co-founder Ivan Soto-Wright sees the acquisition as part of its larger infrastructure strategy. He mentioned MoonPay's recent transactions to expand security, transaction and accounting capabilities, and believes that digital asset companies need more than just check-out payment capabilities to help businesses and end users use cryptocurrencies reliably.

"Every acquisition this year adds the layers of infrastructure needed by businesses and users to use digital assets: mobile funds, security, transactions, accounting," Soto-Wright said. Soto-Wright also described the specific problem Glide targeted: Users could lose money by sending the wrong token on the wrong chain. This means that future blockchain platforms will increasingly require infrastructure that can eliminate these complexities in user workflows, making underlying transfers almost invisible to users.

MoonPay's expanding acquisition pipeline

The two companies did not disclose the financial terms of the Glide acquisition. For MoonPay, the deal adds a new dimension to its busy acquisition period. The acquisition is described as MoonPay's sixth acquisition announced in 2026, with previously reported acquisitions including Sodot, Decent, DFlow, Entendre and Dawn Labs. According to startup data platform Tracxn, MoonPay's investors include Thrive Capital, Paradigm, Valhalla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Coatue. MoonPay also noted a leadership change in its compliance and administrative functions, with Caroline Pham, former acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, appointed chief legal officer and chief administrative officer late last year.

The next step in deposit and routing

As Glide's deposit and routing technology plans to be integrated into MoonPay Deposits, a key unknown question facing developers and users is how quickly MoonPay can translate Glide's cross-chain simplification into a smoother in-app funding experience, and whether this improvement can reduce common user errors caused by token and network mismatches.