MoonPay is buying a twenty-three person broker-dealer for its registrations, and the release does not say what it is paying

What happened

MoonPay said on 23 September 2026 that it "has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire North Capital Investment Technology, Inc.", which would become a wholly owned subsidiary on completion. The release describes North Capital as a private-markets infrastructure platform supporting "capital raising, asset management, clearing, custody and secondary trading for exempt securities, including tokenized securities", and lists what the group holds: "SEC-registered broker-dealers, a SEC-registered alternative trading system, a SEC-registered transfer agent, and a SEC-registered investment adviser". Secondary trading runs through PPEX. Both boards approved the transaction unanimously and completion is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. The release gives no price. CoinDesk reported the deal is worth over $60m and all in stock, attributing the figure to "sources familiar with the matter"; Fortune reported that MoonPay "paid over $60 million in an all-stock deal", attributing it to a person familiar, and added on the same source's account that North Capital's portfolio of SEC licences was the key factor in the decision. Fortune writes that MoonPay "has acquired" the firm; the release says it has agreed to. The scale figures come from pages the two companies control and they do not match the reporting. The release puts the platform at "more than $8.7 billion in primary and secondary transaction volume" with "more than 1,250 approved assets" available for secondary trading on PPEX. northcapital.com carries the same $8.7bn beside 3,520 deals, 2.6 million transactions and 625,000 secondary trades, says the firm has twenty-three employees, gives its headquarters as Midvale, Utah, dates the registered investment adviser to 2008 and the tokenized securities work to 2017. CoinDesk and Fortune both round the volume to about $9bn.

Why it matters

This is a purchase of permission, and the buyer says so. MoonPay's chief executive is quoted saying the company is "building the regulatory foundation to support mass adoption of tokenized real-world assets". A broker-dealer, an alternative trading system, a transfer agent and an investment adviser between them cover the whole life of a tokenized private security: onboarding the investor, recording who holds it, trading it afterwards and advising on it. Assembling that set from nothing takes years of filings and examinations. Buying it takes a merger agreement and a regulatory approval, at a reported price that works out at about $2.6m for each of North Capital's twenty-three employees. The timing is six days after the SEC exempted onchain venues trading listed stock from registering as exchanges. That order is about NMS stock and this business is about exempt private securities, so the two do not touch directly, but they price the same thing: a set of United States registrations that lets a firm put securities on a ledger. The register also shows what a buyer is and is not getting. The Commission's ATS list page says Form ATS "is not an application and the Commission does not approve an ATS before it begins operation" and that it is "instead, a notice to the Commission". North Capital Private Securities Corporation appears on the August 2026 list at entry 47, doing business as "Public Private Execution Network, PPEX or PPEX ATS", which is evidence that the notice was filed and not that the venue was approved.

What is not settled

The price sits in no document either company controls. Two outlets give it as more than $60m in stock on separate unnamed sources, which is two reports rather than two witnesses, and neither says what the stock is worth, what proportion of MoonPay it represents or whether any of it is contingent. Nor do the companies name the approvals they are waiting for or the authorities that must give them. The buyer is also described differently on different pages it controls. The release says MoonPay serves "more than 35 million customers in 180 countries and more than 1500 enterprise clients"; moonpay.com/about-us says "nearly 30 million customers" and infrastructure for "nearly 500 companies". Neither page says which is current. North Capital's own about page lists Jim Dowd as Founder and Managing Director while the release quotes him as "Founder and CEO of North Capital", and gives the headquarters as Midvale while the Commission's register and the release dateline say Salt Lake City. What MoonPay intends to do with the registrations is stated only as ambition: no product, no launch date and no jurisdiction beyond the United States is named.