GoCoin has announced it has raised $1.5m in funding in order to expand its operations as an international payments platform for cryptocurrencies.

The round was led by the Bitcoin Shop, which is a publicly traded company on the over-the-counter market.

“Our investment in GoCoin reflects our confidence in their product and their team,” Charles Allen, CEO of Bitcoin Shop, said in a statement.

Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta and investment firm Crypto Currency Partners also participated in the round.

“User demand continues to grow for alternative payments,” said Van Natta, adding:

“I’m excited to deepen my involvement with GoCoin and their best-in-class payments solution for merchants and game publishers.”

Expansion and competition

GoCoin plans to use the funding to expand its sales and technology teams as demand for cryptocurrency payments grows.

“In our case, it’s expanding the sales staff in terms of direct sales and channel sales. And we’ll probably augment the technology team slightly,” said company co-founder Brock Pierce.

The company was started in July 2013 and its platform went live in December.

GoCoin competes with Coinbase and BitPay in the bitcoin payment processor market. Pierce believes that GoCoin is the number three cryptocurrency payment processor in the world today. The industry will see a lot more competition in the future, he says:

“My view is that there is probably room in this market for 15 of these companies.  If you look historically in payments world, you normally see room for 15 of these types of companies.”

International focus

A favorable regulatory environment in Singapore led GoCoin to incorporate its business there. And it is focused on markets outside of the US.

“I think we’re the only payments company that’s focused on international markets,” said Pierce.

The demand for alternative cryptocurrencies as a form of payment outside bitcoin is also something that makes GoCoin stand out as a payment process. Said Pierce:

“We’re agnostic when it comes to currencies. If there’s mutual demand from merchants and consumers to either spend or accept it, we’ll add the currency.”

GoCoin started to accept litecoin back in January. It recently added support for dogecoin as well.

“We’ve had an international multi-currency focus since day one, and this round will help extend our global footprint and take our services to the next level,” Steve Beauregard, CEO of GoCoin, said in a release announcing this latest round of funding.

Last November, GoCoin raised $550,000 in an early seed round.

Dollar bills image via Shutterstock