From Coin Desk

Multinational bitcoin platform BitX has raised $4m in a round led by South Africa’s third largest company, the Naspers Group.

The investment, announced today, was made via the Internet giant‘s global payments subsidiary, PayU, alongside Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group.

As part of the deal, James Caviness, PayU’s chief product officer, will join the board of directors at BitX.

In a statement, he said:

“We see a bright future for cryptocurrency across a number of industry verticals, and with BitX’s strong management team and solid track record, look forward to leveraging Naspers’ global platform and local knowledge to help them capitalise on these opportunities.”

Though it began as a local South African exchange, BitX, which offers wallet, exchange and merchant services to markets across Southeast Asia and Africa, has seen rapid growth over the last year.

Having invested time in building relationships on-the-ground and recruiting local staff in its branches, with the release of iOS and Android apps, it has also doubled down on mobile, which it described as the “de facto” computing device for the developing world.

The Singapore-based platform now claims to have the largest footprint of any cryptocurrency firm in the emerging markets.

Read more at Coin Desk