Verse will close its digital payment service on September 13. According to a statement on its website, the platform has not been able to find a sustainable path to continue growing and offering high-level innovation.
The company encourages customers to withdraw money from the platform and transfer it to another entity before September 13. It indicates this through instructions that can be read on its website and an automatic assistant by phone. The company does not offer data on the people affected by the closure or business figures.
Verse has been one of the reference stories of the Barcelona ecosystem. The startup was founded in 2015 by Álex Lopera, Borja Rossell and Darío Nieuwenhuis and during the first years it became popular as an application for sending money (it competed with Bizum) and for managing expenses between users. Under the direction of Bernardo Hernández, it was acquired in 2020 by Square, a US technology giant founded by Jack Dorsey, who in turn is the creator of Twitter. At the end of 2021, the group was renamed Block.
Verse’s business has been operating through the company Verse Payments Lithuania UAB, based in Lithuania. Therefore, it is impossible to know the number of workers affected or the data related to the business. In this European country, Verse is authorized by the Bank of Lithuania to operate as an electronic money institution.
In 2020, Verse employed around 40 workers and was valued at between €30 million and €50 million, the price Square paid to take over the entire business. Since its birth, the firm has raised around 38 million euros. Its investors included funds such as Lánzame, Greycroft, Spark, Vas Ventures, among others.
The closure of Verse is part of a movement to withdraw the group from the European market. In fact, Block recently announced the cessation of operations of Clearpay, the deferred payment platform.
