The primary report of this deal originates from a paywalled source. Verse Press has reached out to MoonPay communications for independent confirmation and will update this article upon response.

Glide, incorporated as Tenlab Technologies Inc. and founded in New York City in 2023, built its product for dapp developers rather than end users. Its core function is straightforward: allow any user to deposit funds into an in-app wallet from any source, whether that is another blockchain, a centralized exchange like Binance or Bybit, or a debit or credit card, without requiring the user to manually bridge tokens, swap assets, or hold a native gas token to cover transaction fees. The flow also skips redundant identity verification, sparing users who have already completed KYC elsewhere from repeating that process inside a new application.

The company raised a total of roughly $20.1 million, including a $20 million Series A backed by Benchmark and Y Combinator. At the time of acquisition, the team numbered around four people.

The founders, Tushar Soni (CEO) and Qinyu Tong, both came out of Robinhood Crypto, where they worked on the Robinhood Wallet application. Tong also brings prior experience in enterprise infrastructure from LinkedIn.

That background matters here: the problem Glide addresses is one that wallet builders at consumer scale encounter directly. Friction at the deposit step is a commonly cited reason users abandon crypto apps before completing any transaction.

Glide's product supports more than 100 tokens across 30-plus blockchain networks and, according to the company's documentation, can be integrated into an existing app in under a day using a pre-built widget. Teams requiring a fully custom UI can use Glide's Headless SDK, which typically ships within a week.

This is MoonPay's ninth-plus acquisition and at least its second structured entirely in equity, following a $100 million all-stock deal for Solana trading infrastructure platform DFlow in May 2026.

The pace of dealmaking reflects a deliberate strategic shift. MoonPay began as a fiat on-ramp, a service that converts fiat currency into crypto. It is now assembling what amounts to a full payments network for digital assets. Recent purchases span merchant checkout (Helio, March 2025), stablecoin infrastructure (Iron, 2025), developer funding SDKs (Meso, September 2025), cryptographic key management (Sodot, April 2026), multi-chain routing (Decent, May 2026), and AI-powered accounting for stablecoin operations (Entendre, June 2026).

The Glide deal slots into the developer infrastructure layer, specifically the step between a user discovering a dapp and successfully funding a wallet inside it.

MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright has framed the company's broader direction in terms that extend well beyond on-ramps. Speaking at the time of the Entendre acquisition in June, he said: "Legacy software was built for manual workflows. The next financial system will be coordinated by humans and agents." That vision, centered on eliminating manual steps from financial infrastructure, is consistent with what Glide's deposit layer is designed to accomplish.

Global Implications: Where Frictionless Deposits Matter Most

MoonPay already operates in more than 180 countries and has logged over $8 billion in total transaction volume across 30 million users.

In Nigeria, the company partnered with MetaMask to introduce instant bank transfers for crypto purchases, a move driven by the fact that roughly 90 percent of card-based crypto purchase attempts in Nigeria are declined outright by local banks. Nigeria ranks third globally in MetaMask mobile active users, and approximately 12.4 million Nigerians held crypto assets as of the most recent major Chainalysis survey, conducted in 2022; the current figure is likely higher given documented adoption growth in subsequent years. Regulatory conditions complicate the picture, however. Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission has tightened crypto exchange registration requirements in 2025 and 2026, and users remain subject to Central Bank of Nigeria restrictions on naira-to-crypto conversion. MoonPay's ability to extend Glide-powered services in Nigeria will depend on its local licensing posture; no confirmed Nigerian license information for MoonPay has been publicly reported.

Glide's gasless deposit flow and cross-chain support address a separate but related problem for African users: many hold crypto across multiple exchange accounts on platforms like Binance or YellowCard, and moving those assets into a dapp wallet typically requires bridging steps that are confusing and often fail.

In South Asia, the opportunity is visible in the prediction market sector specifically. Indian users wagered more than $30 million on state election outcomes in 2026, a 400 percent increase from the 2024 general election cycle. That growth comes with a significant regulatory constraint. India's Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act of 2025 (PROGA 2025) classifies decentralized prediction platforms such as Polymarket as illegal online gaming. Developers targeting Indian users in this category face structural legal risk that deposit infrastructure alone cannot resolve, and the addressable market is accordingly narrowed by the current regulatory environment. Developers building gaming and DeFi apps for South Asian audiences still need frictionless wallet funding to retain users, but the full scope of that opportunity depends on how regulatory conditions evolve.

MoonPay's South Asia reach also has notable gaps. Neither the Pakistani rupee nor the Bangladeshi taka is currently supported, leaving two major remittance corridors with documented informal stablecoin use outside the network. Sri Lanka, where crypto adoption accelerated sharply following the 2022 economic crisis, is a market where MoonPay does operate and where Glide's cross-chain deposit infrastructure has a clear use case.

Glide's flat pricing, set at $99 per month with no volume cap on standard tiers, makes that infrastructure accessible to early-stage teams that could not previously justify the integration work.

Two analytical notes are worth flagging. First, MoonPay acquired Meso in September 2025, a product with overlapping goals around developer-facing crypto funding flows. How the two products are rationalized or layered will be worth watching.

Second, MoonPay has been accumulating regulatory milestones, including a BitLicense and New York money transmitter license obtained in June 2025, alongside reported preparations for a public offering. The company is reportedly targeting a $5 billion valuation in an ICE-linked funding round, a step up from its most recent $3.4 billion mark. Acqui-hires of small, technically credible teams fatten the technical narrative for a public offering without meaningfully diluting the cap table. The Glide deal fits that pattern.

Verse Press has reached out to MoonPay communications and to Glide co-founders Tushar Soni and Qinyu Tong for comment and will update this article if a response is received.