Linden Lab to sell payments platform Tilia to Thunes

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Tilia.io

It has been announced that Tilia.io, the all-in-one payments platform established by Linden Lab in 2019 and which manages payment processing and cashing out for Second Life (as well as supporting a number of other platforms and virtual environments), is to be acquired by Singapore-based business-2-business (B2B) payments infrastructure firm Thunes.

The acquisition of Tilia will be for an undisclosed sum, and follows an agreement being reached between Thunes and Tilia majority owner Linden Research (the formal name of Linden Lab). However, it is still currently awaiting regulatory approval, so has not  – as of the time of writing – being finalised.

News of the acquisition was made public via a press release widely circulated by Thunes on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024 (see links below for some of the reporting on the announcement), and has sparked comments, discussions and questions on a number of Second Life related forums.

Who Are Thunes?

Thunes is regarded as a start-up company, although it has been operating for some eight years. As a B2B payments company, Thunes powers payments for major brands such as Uber and Deliveroo, and also to global Fintech companies such as PayPal and Remitly.

They boast that with a single connection, businesses and their customers can both send payments to, and receive payments from 133 countries around the world, with support for 84 currencies and some 550 alternative payment methods (ATMs), including 129 recognised mobile wallets. Whilst headquartered in Singapore, the company has regional offices in London where communications on the deal with Linden Lab are being handled), Paris, Shanghai, New York, Dubai, and Nairobi. In addition to providing a B2B payments infrastructure direct to businesses across the world, Thunes also provides payment services to the banking industry, a service it is aggressively growing in order to more fully compete with SWIFT, the world’s dominant international financial network.

In December 2023 Thunes achieved a market valuation of some $900 million, with its series C funding round bringing the company some US $202 million investment – including from the likes of Visa, the global payment giant, Singaporean government investment vehicle EDBI, and US-based Endeavor Catalyst.

Why Would They be Interested In Tilia†?

Tilia is particularly attractive to Thunes as it is already a fully licensed Money Service Business (MSB) across 48 US states and territories, thus allowing Thunes to readily extend its services to business owners and customers across the United States – including Tilia’s current customer base, which obviously includes Second Life, as well as VRChat, Upland, Avatus and Unity. In addition, through brand recognition within the content creation market and its expertise in managing token-based virtual economies such as the Linden Dollar, Tilia provides Thunes with a ready-made means of expanding its presence in these markets both in the United States and globally.

What Does This Mean for Second Life‡?

This is perhaps harder to quantify from the side-lines. However, there are some points which may be worthy of note:

  • Following regulatory approval, Tilia will be re-branded Thunes, but will continue to be based in San Francisco.
  • The agreement is subject to an exclusive 5-year collaboration, Thunes will provide payment processing and payouts to Linden Lab across Thunes’ global network.
    • This should allow Second Life users and creators to enjoy more options for buying Linden Dollars and for cashing-out “in a more cost-efficient manner and with increased transparency”, with the Lab adding via a comment on a Reddit thread, “without additional costs”.
  • In support of the above, the Thunes press release includes the following statement from Brad Oberwager, Linden Lab’s co-owner and Executive Chairman:
Thunes is an exceptional company that directly connects nearly every payment method and market worldwide. The combination of Tilia and Thunes will give Linden Lab’s customers more payment choices, and the ability to receive pay-outs in real-time, anywhere, into the wallet or bank account of their choice. It will be business as usual for our people and our customers as we bring Tilia and Thunes together.

I reached out to Linden Lab on hearing the news, and was informed that although the company has nothing further to add to the Thunes press release at this time, those from the company who will be attending the forthcoming Community Round Table (informally announced during the April 19th Lab Gab session, and featured in my summary of that event) will be prepared to discuss the acquisition. I’ll have a post on the Round Table as soon as all information relating to it (where, time, how to attend / watch) is publicly released.

With thanks to Coffee Pancake for the alert.

Related Links

† Please note I am not an financial services expert, this section is therefore a subjective best guess.
‡ Again, please note this is a subjective best guess, even given the supporting quotes.

Note: updated to better reflect Tilia’s relationship with Second Life.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

8 thoughts on “Linden Lab to sell payments platform Tilia to Thunes”

  1. As a Brit, currently when I buy L$ I get hit by PayPal’s currency conversion fees for converting GBP into USD (plus the fact that the GBP-USD exchange rate is poor anyway), then get hit again by the fees charged by LL for buying L$ using USD. If this acquisition means that I can buy L$ directly using GBP then this could potentially be beneficial to me. Potentially. It rather depends on the price of L$ in GBP of course.

    Anyway, it will be interesting to see what this change brings.

    Like

  2. Interesting! I wonder if Brad’s getting some of his money out before another round of allegations need to be investigated? Not that any of the stuff about workplace toxicity has been addressed yet, anyway, and nor does anyone I know expect it to be.

    Like

    1. Acquisitions like this don’t happen overnight- they take multiple months to develop; plus there is no evidence that Linden Research was actively seeking to devest itself of Tilia; the process could just as easily have been initiated by Thunes. As noted in the above article (and more particularly the Thunes press release) Tilia will have been an extremely attractive proposition for Thunes, which has been looking to more directly expand its operations across the United States, given that Tilia is a relatively small company (making operational acquisition easier) which has already gone through the multi-year process of becoming a licensed and regulated MSB in 48 US states and territories, thus saving Thunes the trouble and expense of doing so. Further, Tilia is already successfully operating within a market space Thunes is keen to further expand into.

      So no, this is unlikely to have anything to do with the pseudonymous allegations made in February or as a result of any panic on Brad Oberwager’s part (or on the part of Randal Waterfield or Raj Date).

      As to those allegations, Of course as users, we would all like to know more; however, reticence on the Lab’s part to say more on the matter than already officially stated, perhaps needs to be better understood.

      There are – as I and other commentators on that matter noted – potential legal ramifications arising from the allegations made (one in particular being the matter of defamation, potentially on multiple levels). As such, Linden Lab will be under advisement from its legal counsel to limit statements on that matter to those aspects they can directly comment on, such as the upcoming changes to internal and customer-facing policies and conduct standards which were indicated both by Brad Oberwager and more recently by Keira Linden.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Acquisitions do indeed take time, but that now-gone piece didn’t exist in a vacuum or spring fully-formed from its author’s imagination. Were – hypothetically – a new owner to make some unfortunate discoveries when the ink was dry on a contract, they might well be inclined to look for a way to unobtrusively extract ROI. We don’t know either way, and that is unlikely to change.

        The toxic workplace issues, however, are easy enough to get insight on. I’m sure you know a Mole or two – do what I did and ask them what’s been done about that (off the record, naturally, given the penalties).

        Like

  3. The lab had said this on 23rd April 2024 “This is good news for Second Life residents and creators. More options without additional costs. We are having an open meeting on May 20 and can discuss in detail.“

    Guess we will have to wait to find out more information.

    Like

  4. I think it’s a good match, both appear to compliment each other. My tiny research showed that Thunes is a privately owned company, just like Linden Lab. It appears to have a single, unknown, owner. It has someone from Belgium in a leadership role. Nothing weird with it.

    The sky won’t be coming down.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. What, you mean Chicken Little needn’t get out of bed? 😀 .

      Thunes seems to have a fair amount of support from the Singaporean government, plus indirect financial backing from that source via EDBI (as noted in the article). Like you say, I don’t see anything untoward to worry about.

      As to the CEO – that’s rather interesting inasmuch has I read two in-depth profiles on Thunes yesterday, each written little more than a month apart, and each gave noted the CEO was from Belgium – but the articles gave different names and included photos of different individuals! Maybe someone left in the interim – or maybe they run some kind of power-sharing management thing, with the two most senior execs bouncing between the CEO and CFO roles 😀 .

      Like

Comments are closed.