ZBD Secures $40M: Revolutionizing In-Game Payments

The landscape of digital entertainment is undergoing a significant transformation, particularly within the video gaming sector, where the integration of real-money transactions is evolving beyond traditional purchasing models. At the forefront of this evolution is ZBD, an innovative payment infrastructure company that has recently announced securing $40 million in Series C financing. This substantial investment, spearheaded by Blockstream Capital Partners, underscores a growing confidence in ZBD’s strategic vision to embed real-money payment mechanisms directly into video games and various digital platforms, fundamentally reshaping the financial dynamics of interactive experiences.

Addressing a Structural Gap in the Games Economy

For many decades, the financial architecture within video games has been predominantly oriented around 'pay-ins'. This encompasses various monetization strategies such as purchases of virtual items, subscriptions, and in-app spending. While these systems have progressively become more sophisticated, the capability to efficiently move real money out to players—instantly, compliantly, and at scale—has historically remained quite restricted. This imbalance has become increasingly pronounced with the rise of new gaming paradigms, including rewarded gameplay, burgeoning creator economies, and user-generated content models.

Players today anticipate tangible value in exchange for their time, attention, and demonstrated skill, moving beyond the sole gratification of virtual currencies or intangible rewards. ZBD’s foundational model is meticulously engineered to bridge this critical structural gap, empowering developers and publishers to cultivate more dynamic and equitable financial ecosystems within their games.

Payments Built for Payouts, Not Just Purchases

ZBD distinguishes itself by leveraging the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a layer-2 protocol designed for fast, low-cost Bitcoin transactions, to power its real-money embedded payments. This innovative approach allows games and applications to facilitate instantaneous payouts in various forms, including fiat currency, Bitcoin, and even gift cards. Crucially, these ZBD-powered payments are intrinsically woven into the fabric of the gameplay experience, contrasting sharply with traditional reward systems that often rely on third-party workarounds or external mechanisms.

The company has already demonstrated significant operational scale, processing over 120 million transactions annually. Over the past year, ZBD has successfully doubled the number of games integrated with its comprehensive software development kit (SDK). Prominent developers such as TapNation, Fumb Games, and PlayEmber are actively utilizing ZBD’s robust payment infrastructure to distribute tens of millions of dollars in rewards to their dedicated player bases, highlighting the tangible impact and utility of this fintech solution. What truly differentiates ZBD, however, is not merely its adoption of crypto rails but the sophisticated regulatory and operational framework meticulously constructed around them.

Regulation as a Competitive Advantage in Gaming Fintech

In an industry where regulatory clarity is often a complex challenge, ZBD has proactively embraced compliance as a core competitive advantage. In 2025, the company achieved a significant milestone by becoming one of the inaugural entities to secure both MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) and EMI (Electronic Money Institution) licences in the Netherlands. These critical authorizations enable ZBD to provide regulated fiat and crypto payment services across the entire European Economic Area. Concurrently, ZBD maintains multiple Money Transmitter Licences throughout the United States, cementing its position as a globally compliant payment provider.

This comprehensive licensing stack empowers ZBD to function as a full-fledged payments provider, extending far beyond the scope of a specialized rewards tool. Its expansive capabilities now encompass card issuance, seamless bank transfers, virtual IBANs, and efficient currency exchange services. Such extensive infrastructure is typically beyond the reach of individual game developers without engaging with multiple financial institutions. ZBD’s compliance-first methodology has strategically positioned it among a select group of providers capable of offering real-money gaming payments at an extensive scale, all while navigating and mitigating potential regulatory ambiguities.

Why the Series C Investment Matters Now

The recent $40 million Series C funding round signifies a strategic pivot from experimentation to accelerated scale. ZBD has already effectively established a strong product-market fit, particularly within the mobile payouts segment. This fresh injection of capital is specifically earmarked to fuel its ambitious expansion initiatives across a broader spectrum of gaming platforms, including console, PC, and various creator-driven ecosystems. According to Ben Cousens, a key figure within the company, ZBD’s core mission revolves around streamlining complex financial systems that have historically been characterized by their slowness, fragmentation, and inherent difficulty for developers to manage effectively. The objective is to supersede these legacy systems with a singular, seamlessly integrated payment layer.

For Nicolas Brand, ZBD’s unique blend of native Bitcoin payment technology coupled with its challenging-to-replicate licensing across diverse jurisdictions provides it with a distinct edge within an increasingly competitive fintech landscape. This strategic advantage positions ZBD not merely as a participant but as a potential leader in defining the future of gaming finance.

Turning Payments Into a Strategic Capability

ZBD’s long-term strategic ambition extends well beyond merely facilitating rewards. Throughout 2026, the company is poised to roll out a complete, compliance-ready payments stack. This sophisticated solution will empower publishers to assume direct ownership and comprehensive control over money movement within their games, thereby reducing reliance on third-party outsourcing. This pivotal shift fundamentally reconfigures payments, transforming them from a conventional cost center into a potent strategic tool for competitive advantage.

Real-money transactions, when seamlessly embedded, can unlock novel revenue streams and foster deeper engagement loops across various aspects of gameplay, creator tipping mechanisms, user-generated content, and dynamic live experiences. As articulated by Simon Cowell, the overarching goal is to integrate money movement as an intrinsic, native component of the play experience, rather than an external system superficially layered on top.

Infrastructure, Not Speculation

In an industry often characterized by rapid trend adoption and speculative ventures, ZBD’s ascendancy reflects a more profound and quiet shift: the methodical convergence of robust payment solutions, stringent regulatory adherence, and innovative gameplay design. The $40 million Series C investment emphatically underscores investor conviction that the next frontier of gaming innovation will be driven less by fleeting monetization tricks and more by the efficient, transparent, and regulated movement of value between players, creators, and platforms.

If real-money interactions are truly destined to become a standard and expected feature of digital experiences, the foundational infrastructure enabling these interactions will be as crucial as the games themselves. ZBD is strategically positioning itself precisely at this critical intersection—not as a fleeting rewards experiment, but as the essential financial plumbing for the evolving and expanding global games economy. This approach heralds a future where financial fluidity and regulatory certainty empower unprecedented levels of interaction and value exchange within the digital realm.