Prediction marketplace Polymarket announces the integration of MoonPay to support payments from bank accounts and cards

What’s new? Decentralized cryptocurrency prediction marketplace Polymarket will integrate solutions from US payment company MoonPay, which will allow users to pay for bets via bank transfers and credit cards. This month, betting volumes on Polymarket updated the record at $271 million. The reason for the sharp growth was the events that unfolded around the presidential race in the United States.

Source: X.com

What else is known? Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt during his speech at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and incumbent President Joe Biden was diagnosed with coronavirus. Biden has since withdrawn from the upcoming election and called for support for his vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.

As a result, betting volume in July was more than a third of the year-to-date total and new user registrations topped 47 600, according to analytics platform Dune. Polymarket now needs to modernize the platform to handle the growing volume of incoming funds.

David Rosenberg, Polymarket’s vice president of strategy, said the current election is the most unpredictable and volatile in his memory.

A total of $380,97 million has been bet on the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election on Polymarket, with Trump having a 62% chance of winning, and Kamala Harris at 33%. The remaining percentages divided among politicians such as Michelle Obama, Robert Francis Kennedy Jr, Hillary Clinton, and others.

The largest bet was made on July 24: an unidentified person bet $1,4 million on Trump’s victory.

Currently, users are buying USDC stablecoin from issuer Circle on crypto exchanges and transferring it to Polymarket before placing bets. By partnering with MoonPay, payment options for players will be expanded. In addition to cards and bills, Polymarket will be able to accept other cryptocurrencies as well as payments via PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

“The aim is to make payments so seamless that they don’t even know crypto is the underlying means of transaction,” Rosenberg added.

As part of the partnership, MoonPay will become Polymarket’s exclusive partner for processing incoming fiat payments.

That said, Polymarket’s platform is not available in the US, this was part of a settlement agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In early 2022, the CFTC fined Polymarket $1,4 million for offering illegal trading services.

It is noteworthy that a few months later, Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the CFTC under the Trump administration, joined Polymarket’s board of directors. In May of this year, he also joined the board of directors of Paxos, an issuer of stablecoins.

In May, it became known that Polymarket raised $70 million in two rounds of funding.