Bridge Investment Memo: Building the "American Express" of Crypto Payments — Insights Behind 1confirmation's Investment
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Bridge Investment Memo: Building the "American Express" of Crypto Payments — Insights Behind 1confirmation's Investment
Bridge aims to become the "American Express" of the cryptocurrency world, enabling users to make purchases globally and settle transactions in their local currency through integration with businesses.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthors: Zach Abeams & Sean Yu
Translated by: TechFlow
Zach Abeams:
Summary:
Bridge (formerly Shift Pay) is building APIs to help businesses enable users to make low-cost, seamless cryptocurrency payments across different assets and blockchains. Cryptocurrency transactions can be complex—especially when the asset you hold doesn't match the one required for a transaction (e.g., holding USD but needing ETH, or holding ETH but needing SOL to buy an NFT). The payment process often involves multiple steps for users (poor UX), causes delays (on-ramp latency), and incurs high costs (taxes, gas fees). As new tokens, protocols, and use cases emerge, crypto transactions may become even more complicated.
Bridge aims to become the "American Express" of crypto—by integrating with businesses to let users purchase anything globally (on any blockchain) and settle in their preferred currency. Users could instantly transact with any crypto asset while paying with assets they already hold. For example: buying an NFT with ETH and settling the transaction in USD; paying gas fees on Layer 2 with MATIC and settling in ETH.
We are investing in this company’s initial funding round (amount undisclosed).
Bridge's Key Hypotheses:
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The founding team at Bridge is exceptional and mission-driven, positioning them well to capture a massive opportunity in crypto payments. Founders Zach Abrams and Sean Yu co-founded a payments startup a decade ago, which they successfully sold to Square. Since then, they’ve held product and engineering roles at successful fintech companies like Coinbase and Brex. They bring both hands-on entrepreneurial experience and executive-level exposure from leading industry players. We believe they are among the strongest teams in the space—so strong that we’d back them regardless of their initial idea. That they’re now tackling the vast opportunity in crypto payments makes the venture even more compelling.
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Crypto payments represent a massive market. Today, the primary use case for cryptocurrency remains investment. Payment applications haven’t grown as quickly as many in the industry expected a decade ago. When I worked at Coinbase in 2013, we were excited about merchants adopting Bitcoin payments, particularly for cross-border B2B payments and remittances. We invested significant time and effort into these areas, but the market wasn’t ready then. Still, I firmly believe that day will come—and today, the integration of crypto payments into internet commerce feels closer than ever before.
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Now is the ideal time for crypto payments to accelerate, and intermediaries can play a crucial role in this evolution. Currently, the epicenter of crypto commerce is NFT trading. About 95% of NFT transactions occur in the native cryptocurrency of their respective chains (e.g., ETH for NFTs on Ethereum), requiring no payment intermediary since everything happens on-chain. We believe demand for crypto payment intermediaries will grow in the future, though the exact use cases remain unclear.
Team (10/10):
Co-founder Zach Abrams sold his first payments startup, Evenly, to Square back in 2013 (see details here). While not a massive exit, launching a startup during an era when entrepreneurship was far less common demonstrated his innate founder mindset. Since then, he has consistently taken on leadership roles in product development.
Sean Yu
Zach Abrams has worked at several leading growth-stage companies, including Coinbase and Brex. He possesses strong product intuition and relentless work ethic. As CEO, he will tirelessly pursue product-market fit.
Co-founder Sean Yu previously worked with Zach at Evenly as co-founder and lead engineer. Later, he served as an engineer at companies like Coinbase and Brex, earning praise for his execution excellence—both writing high-quality code and recruiting top-tier engineering talent.
Zach and Sean form an outstanding founding team. They have a proven track record of execution, demonstrating world-class operational ability, along with a deep desire to create broad impact.
Product (8/10):
This is one of the rare instances where we’ve invested before the product direction is fully defined. We know the company will build something in payments, but expect the product to evolve through iteration. Initially, they focused on NFT use cases, engaging with NFT marketplaces on enabling multi-chain, multi-currency payments. This focus may shift over time.
Community (9/10):
Zach is an excellent community builder—hardworking, highly communicative with users, and full of energy. He has already reached out to most founders in 1confirmation’s portfolio to understand their pain points around payments. Once the product direction becomes clear, I’m confident Zach will actively acquire customers and deeply understand their needs.
Token Mechanism (N/A):
This project likely won’t introduce a token. The team may grow into a traditional company, with a potential path to success via IPO or acquisition by a large corporation.
Key Risks:
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Timing: We firmly believe crypto commerce will eventually thrive—the question is timing. Right now, there isn’t a clear need for third-party intermediaries in crypto payments. This could change with broader stablecoin adoption or the emergence of new use cases, but it’s uncertain when that shift will occur.
Conclusion (Team + Product + Community + Token Mechanism: 9):
Overall, this is an outstanding team dedicated to advancing global crypto commerce. They have tremendous potential to succeed in this mission, and we’re excited to be part of their journey.
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