MoonPay Acquires North Capital to Build Regulated Tokenised Securities Stack

MoonPay, best known as a crypto payments infrastructure firm, has agreed to acquire North Capital in an all-stock transaction that Coindesk valued at more than $60 million, pending regulatory approvals. The deal hands MoonPay a ready-built regulated securities infrastructure layer, encompassing broker-dealer, transfer agent, and investment advisory registrations, as it pushes beyond pure crypto into tokenised assets.

North Capital brings considerable operational heft to the transaction. Its PPEX alternative trading system (ATS) carries more than 1,250 eligible securities and has processed over $8.7 billion in cumulative transaction volume, and the firm has a track record of helping companies raise capital through exemption pathways. MoonPay has indicated that North Capital’s brokerage and advisory businesses will be folded into its broader infrastructure platform.

The more pointed governance question surrounds Agora, a multi-ATS network that North Capital co-founded with tZERO to let qualified institutional participants discover and route orders across venues rather than remain locked within a single system. Agora processed its first routed order in July, positioning it as a direct response to the liquidity fragmentation that has constrained private and tokenised securities markets. With one of Agora’s two founding ATSs now set to sit inside a vertically integrated group that also controls a transaction router and payment rails, questions about the network’s neutrality and governance will need answers before participants and counterparties can fully assess the deal’s market-structure consequences.