Crypto payments startups Uphold doubles presence in Portugal with Scytale's acquisition

U.S.-based digital finance platform Uphold announced that it has doubled its presence in Portugal following its acquisition of Scytale, a web development and design studio specializing in producing intelligent applications.

Launched in 2015, Uphold, formerly Bitreserve, is a platform app model, providing financial services to a global market. It promotes innovation by offering a platform approach that enables app developers and fintech partners to leverage Uphold’s reach via licensed relationships with banks and financial service partners worldwide.

“Now, we’ll get to build, implement, and continually enhance solutions for a truly global business. Uphold has more than 1 million customers in over 183 countries and we’ll be able to see our ideas become part of its growth story around the world,” Nuno Ferreira, Scytale’s former Chief Executive Officer and now Uphold’s Vice President of Engineering, said in a press release.

With an aim to make investments and payments seamless, easy, and affordable to people, Uphold now offers mobile access to and transfers between 23 fiat currencies, 12 digital assets and tokens, and four metals. Since its launch, it has facilitated over $4 billion in transactions.

“These aims align well with Scytale’s insistence that their solutions and visual designs should improve life, work and play for users,” Tiago Ribero, Uphold’s Co-Chief Technology Officer, said.

Uphold said it will continue to partner with talented people as it plans to extend its global reach.

The American payment startup has also recently partnered with Ledger, a security and infrastructure solutions provider for cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications, to boost its security. The collaboration will see Ledger’s institutional custody platform Ledger Vault protect customers’ funds from hacks.