Cryptocurrency payment provider MoonPay is acquiring Web3-focused creative agency Nightshift as the company looks to build a one-stop-shop for brands looking to take advantage of online currencies and adjacent technologies such as collectible tokens and metaverse activations.

MoonPay, which provides crypto payment services and non-fungible token (NFT) infrastructure to brands including Nike, Universal and Fox, said the acquisition will further its mission to make a new iteration of the property-based internet, or Web3, more accessible to brand customers. and, in turn, consumers. The companies declined to share the exact financial terms of the purchase.

As part of the deal, Nightshift will rebrand under the new Otherlife name, and the agency will maintain its branded client roster, which includes Adobe, Shopify and Arsenal FC, as well as serve more existing MoonPay clients.

“There was a great opportunity for us to come together and now be able to offer end-to-end lifecycle support for big brands,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO of MoonPay. “Now we can go to any brand that has an idea or wants to get into Web3, and we can help them execute a complete end-to-end strategy.”

The deal comes as a shift in the cryptocurrency space and declines in the NFT market have made some major brands wary of entering the Web3 space after companies rushed to get on board. But MoonPay company president Keith Grossman, who stepped down as president of Time magazine to join the company last month, said there’s still a lot of interest in using the technology for business cases like loyalty programs and credit supplements. intellectual property, if not the more speculative side. from space

“What Nightshift has done really well is show people what Web3 experiences can be and how they can deepen brand engagement,” Grossman said. “And at the end of the day, if you can show customers how they can be more successful, they don’t care if it’s Web1, Web2 or Web3, they just want to be more successful.”

Founded in 2018, MoonPay has raised about $642 million to date, according to data center Crunchbase. The company previously introduced an NFT platform called HyperMint in June last year with brands like Universal Pictures and Fox Corporation signed on as launch partners. The startup has also worked with Nike to boost its virtual shoe market and created a Halloween Horror Nights NFT scavenger hunt with Universal Parks and Resorts.

“This technology is some of the best fandom technology that has ever been around,” Soto-Wright said. “And part of it, when we talked to brands, was ‘OK, how do you execute a strategy? What is the ‘why’? How do we implement a strategy?’”

With its track record of guiding brands through Web3 strategies and marketing activations, the Nightshift purchase is intended to help answer those questions. Nightshift CEO Michael Perrow, who co-founded the company with executive creative director Michael Moodie, said MoonPay’s infrastructure will also help the agency offer more targeted technology options to the brands it advises.

“The real synergy that I find here, where the 1+1=3, is that now we can use the infrastructure of MoonPay and HyperMint, we can provide some of the big brands that we work with, like Arsenal, for example, options on how to incorporate to his millions of fans on Web3 seamlessly,” Perrow said.

“Using the wallets and the smart contracts, using the on-ramps, using the ever-growing infrastructure is really exciting for us to provide best-in-class solutions for all these crazy ideas that we’re coming up with.”