Bitcoin merchant services and exchange provider Coinify ApS has acquired Bitcoin solutions provider Coinzone B.V.

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.

Founded in March 2014, Coinzone has been building a full stack Bitcoin solution with a focus on the European market.

The company claims it delivers a seamless experience for users to buy, sell, trade and transact with Bitcoin, as well as for merchants to accept Bitcoin without taking any risk.

Coinzone says it prides itself on providing “solutions for Europeans in Europe with simplicity, security and data privacy in mind,” with a goal of making it easy to spend Bitcoin while at the same time giving the users peace of mind that all their data is protected in accordance with European Data Privacy Laws.

Acquirer Coinify provides similar services to Coinzone, with the company having as its goal the spread and use of digital currencies.

Services provided by the company include the ability for users to buy and sell Bitcoin, and to accept Bitcoin payments.

Coinify Chief Financial Officer Christian Visti Larsen told Coindesk that the purchase comes as part of the push by the company to shift its focus from acquiring individual merchants, to payment service providers (PSPs).

He went on to compare Coinify’s move to being similar to Bitnet, in that they will seek to partner with larger entities that provide payments support to thousands of online merchants.

“More merchants today do business with a PSP and would rather have multiple payment options through a PSP,” Larsen said. “Most of Coinzone’s partners were asking for this service, so it seemed like a perfect match.”

Consolidation

The acquisition is representative of the broader Bitcoin and crytpocurrency market maturing, in that now we are seeing companies looking to acquire smaller competitors to boost their overall client numbers.

But on top of that, the PSP model could represent a more significant change in how we look at Bitcoin merchant service providers; Larsen noting that merchants would prefer to deal with a PSP that offers multiple payment options bucks the trend with (particularly) American startups in the space that are focused on being singular providers of one merchant service.

If it’s a long-term trend or not is yet to be seen, but from a purely business and logical sense, the PSP model definitely will become more appealing to companies that are looking to value add and/ or offer something different, particularly those who have been venture capital backed.

Coinzone had raised $1.4 million in a seed round that included GECAD Group and Radu Georgescu prior to acquisition.

Coinify is backed by Accelerace and Seed Capital also through a seed round of $507,000.

Image credit: Coinzone.