Category: Tilia

LL completes Tilia sale to Thunes: What you need to know

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Tilia.io

Update: Linden Lab has now blogged on the change-over – see: A New Chapter: Tilia Joins Global Payments Leader Thunes, together with a FAQ. I have further updated this piece to include details on user data security, as given by Brad Oberwager in April 2024, as a result of being was on this subject.

On Thursday, 29th, 2025, Linden Lab Executive Chair Brad Oberwager and members of his team held a Zoom call with bloggers and creators to provide an update on the acquisition of Tilia.io, the all-in-one payments platform the Lab launched, and which handles payments processing, USD account balances, etc., for Second Life, to Singapore-based Thunes, based business-2-business (B2B) payments infrastructure firm.

The following is a summary of the core points of the discussion, some of which re-trod the subject of account security, as I’ve already covered in Linden Lab: keeping your Second Life account safe.

Acquisition and Change-Over

  • The acquisition is due to complete on Wednesday, June 4th, 2025.
  • On this date, there will a series of steps taken by both Linden Lab and Thunes to complete the change-over.
  • Perhaps most notably, Second Life web pages referencing Tilia Inc., will instead reference Thunes Financial Services LLC, and the Tilia website will be rebranded.
  • While there are chances of some hiccups given the back-end complexity of the change, these should be minimal, and the SL support teams will be ready to help any users who may experience issues.
  • In short: “Don’t Panic” when/if you see the changes happening.

What This Immediately Means to Users

For the majority of users, there should be no visible difference to the processes of buying L$ or cashing-out.

  • User Data Security: An important point to note with the acquisition of Tilia is that Second Life user data is not changing hands.
    • Tilia will have new owners and will be renamed, but the lock-down of Second Life user data resides in two places: Tilia (for financial information) and Second Life (actual user data).
    • As a financial services company, Thunes is required to keep financial data as secure as it currently is with Tilia, and the data will not be removed from the current Tilia systems and moved elsewhere.
  • There will be no changes in existing fees charged by the Lab for cashing-out or buying L$.
  • No-one needs to create an account with Thunes to keep buying L$ or cashing-out, etc.
  • There will be no change in how support issues relating to finances are handled: users will continue to deal with the Lab’s own billing support team. you will not have to deal with Thunes directly.
  • Linden Lab will continue to manage the LindeX, and nothing will be changing on this front.
  • However:
    • Following the change-over, users may be required to acknowledge the change via a check-box the first time they engage with the rebranded service.
    • Some users may have to re-submit information such as their credit card details or re-confirm a payment account as a result of the change-over.

What It Means Going Forward

  • Potentially more methods by which to receive payments from Second Life (e.g. to different accounts, through different services, etc.) or by which to purchase L$ – Thunes supports pay-outs across 130+ countries and 320+ payment methods globally.
  • It is possible that as new payment methods are added to Second Life, they may be subject to increased fees as a result of charges made by the payment method.
    • To aid in understanding of fees charged, the Lab will start to provide a breakdown: how much they are charging & how much of that due to the payment method. This is to allow users to decide whether they wish to use a newer payment method, which might offer certain advantages (e.g. faster processing), or not.
  • LL has a 5-year agreement with Thunes to prevent Thunes forcing increases on existing services provided to LL (although this obviously does not prevent LL making changes to fees should they need to).
  • Much better fraud controls and investigation, leveraging Thunes own capabilities as well as LL’s support team.

Benefits to Linden Lab

  • The company is no longer engaged in trying to operate and maintain what is essentially a fintech company, with all the costs involved therein.
  • Ability for management to focus solely on building and improving Second Life.
  • The payments team can be focused solely on Second Life, rather than having to also focus on regulatory requirements and deal with multiple payment services, etc., as these will now be the responsibility for Thunes to manage.

Related Links

 

Lab announces migrations to Tilia Wallet complete

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Friday January 17th, 2025, Linden Lab announced improvements to the financial and billing systems used by Second Life as provided by Tilia, the Lab’s trusted billing partner- see: Enhancing the Financial Experience in Second Life.

On Friday, February 7th, the Lab provided an update on this work: Faster Payouts Are Here! Second Life Completes Migration to Tilia Wallet.

In the interests of clarity and first-hand reading, I’m not going to list everything in here; better than people read the Lab’s own post. However, the following points are worth highlighting:

  • All USD balances are now securely managed through Tilia Wallet, providing a centralized and compliant way to handle fiat currency transactions.
  • Whilst maintaining all current pay-out connections:
    • Pay-out transactions should now process faster through Tilia.
    • There will be an introduction of direct bank deposits for the receipt of pay-outs (exact implementation time frame for this still TBA at the time of the update)
  • Updates to the Second Life Marketplace, Cashier, and Account dashboards to make managing payments smoother and more intuitive.
  • Enhanced Security & Compliance: Tilia is a fully regulated financial institution, ensuring that all transactions are secure, fully tracked, and compliant with global financial regulations.
This upgrade also marks a significant step forward in enhancing the financial and billing experience for all residents, ensuring greater security, reliability, and flexibility. Tilia has managed payments, tax forms, and KYC processes for Second Life for a while now. With this upgrade, they now also handle all fiat currency transactions, including securely holding USD earnings in Tilia wallets and processing credits (pay-outs). 
This upgrade also brings both familiar and new pay-out options, including PayPal, Skrill, and the newly added MassPay.

– From the Lab’s blog post

Again, please refer to the official blog post for full details.

Lab announces improvements to the financial and billing systems used by Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Friday January 17th, 2025, Linden Lab announced improvements to the financial and billing systems used by Second Life as provided by Tilia, the Lab’s trusted billing partner.

The full details of the changes being made can be found in the official blog post Enhancing the Financial Experience in Second Life.

In the interests of clarity and first-hand reading, I’m not going to list everything in here; better than people read the Lab’s own post. However, the following points are worth highlighting:

  • The changes and updates are being deployed over the rest of January 2025, and on a rolling basis. Therefore, users will see them come into effect as they are applied.
  • The will result in a series of updates in how information is displayed within various web properties (e.g. the Cashier page, the Add Payment Method page, etc.).
  • There will be no changes to fees for existing services. However, new pay-out types and speeds that will be coming soon may have different fees based on the underlying costs involved with those pay-out methods.
  • From January 30th, 2025, Skrill will no longer be available to add as a new payment or pay-out method.
    • Those already using Skrill as a payment or pay-out method, you may continue to do so as long as it remains active in your account.
    • However, if anyone using Skrill removes it as as their payment / pay-out methods after January 30th, 2025, they will not be able to re-add it.
  • Once these changes are active, the following countries will no longer be supported with new pay-out connections: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Through our partnership with Tilia, these updates create a more modern and sustainable foundation for managing Second Life’s economy. The system now automatically reconciles transactions nightly, allowing for accurate and efficient handling of payments and balances. Users will continue to have the flexibility to manage their balances and payment methods while benefiting from improved security and reliability.

– From the Lab’s blog post

Again, please refer to the official blog post for full details.

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.

VRChat uses Tilia LLC to Power Its Creator Economy

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Tilia LLC.

Tilia LLC the digital payments platform created by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, is to power VRChat’s new Creator Economy, the first phase of which was launched on Tuesday, December 5th, 2023. In doing so, VRChat becomes the latest in a growing list of platforms and games utilising Tilia’s capabilities, including Second Life, Unity and Avatus.

The announcement came via a press release issued by VRChat and published by numerous outlets including Business Wire, which revealed the first phase of VRChat’s new Creator Economy is called Paid Subscriptions. It allows VRChat users to subscribe directly to their favourite creators and support them financially. In return those creators are able to craft unique, custom experiences for their supporters to enjoy. Eventually, the new Creator Economy is intended to allow the half-a-million creators using the platform to receive compensation for their work.

In particular, the Paid Subscriptions system is closely linked to the VRChat’s Udon custom scripting language, allowing creators to more easily build custom experiences for those supporting them through the service. IT has also been developed to work with many of VRChat’s other systems with the aim of enabling pre-existing communities on the platform to monetize their offerings as the Creator Economy is built-out and enhanced.

We’re thrilled to finally launch the first piece of the VRChat Creator Economy, Paid Subscriptions! Our community is responsible for everything magical in VRChat, and the Creator Economy enables us all to financially support our incredible creators. Our hope is that with more support, our creators can bring even more magical content to the platform.

– Graham Gaylor, Co-founder and CEO of VRChat

As an all-in-one platform and service, fully registered across the United Stats as a  licensed money transmitter, together with decades of expertise in dealing with digital currencies and token systems which can be transferred to and from fiat currency, Tilia occupies a unique business space. It is both able to provide platforms like VRChat with unique insight into operating and managing digital economies, and it can supply the core systems and services necessary to do so, whilst meeting all the various compliance and regulatory requirements for digital transactions and money transfers, relieving customers of the need to do so themselves.

Since it inception, Tilia LLC has been gradually building its client base and working to establish strategic partnerships, such as with J.P. Morgan Payments as announced in October 2022, and which saw an expansion of Tilia’s board (read more here). However, within the sector of immersive 3D social  / creative environments, VRChat is a name that is probably as instantly as recognisable as Second Life, and represents a major new partnership for Tilia LLC going forward.

Tilia was built to support the unique and complex requirements for creator-based economies. We are proud to partner with such a recognised innovator like VRChat as they seek to further encourage, empower and enable their creators.

– Brad Oberwager, Tilia LLC CEO

Read more via the press release.

Additional Links

Tilia LLC gains strategic investment from J.P. Morgan

Posted on by Inara Pey

Tilia LLC, founded by Linden Research Inc., as a wholly-owned subsidiary specialising in virtual currencies and providing money services business solution to virtual platforms, has announced it has gained strategic investment from J.P. Morgan Payments, a part of the world’s largest bank (by market capitalisation), JPMorgan Chase.

Tilia has been running Second Life’s US $650 million dollar economy for the past seven years, handling over US $86 million is payments to users in the last 12 months alone. Tilia’s services have also been used by the likes of Sansar, Upland and Avatus, and leverages in partnerships with Unity (allowing Tilia’s API and services to be made available to Unity developers as an integrated end-to-end payment solution) and Applovin.

E. Drew Soinski, Senior Payments Executive, Managing Director at J.P. Morgan Payments joins the Board of Tilia LLC

While an (unspecified in dollar terms) minority investment, J.P. Morgan Payment’s involvement is liable to allow Tilia to increase pay-out methods and the number of currencies it can support, thus allowing it to provide a pay-out in local fiat currency for creators to pretty much anywhere credit cards work.

The deal has been in motion for almost a year, with effort being put into ensuring Tilia’s services are interoperable with those of J.P. Morgan Payments as well as structuring the overall financial elements of the deal. With its completion, E. Drew Soinski, Senior Payments Executive, Managing Director at J.P. Morgan Payments, has  joined Tilia’s board of directors, serving alongside Brad Oberwager, Raj Date and Aston Waldman, who is also the company’s CEO.

From Tilia’s perspective, the partnership means the company will be even better placed to serve the emerging stream of “metaverse”-related companies, providing a wide range of currency services.

Tilia is money into the metaverse. It’s money moved into the metaverse and money moved out of the metaverse. And why this is so important is because you cannot have this concept of the metaverse without a social economy. It is both the social aspect and the financial aspect. Those two things must work in harmony. To do money, you need some virtual token to make money work. Money has to be rock solid. That is JP Morgan. That’s the partnership. What’s the value of Tilia? You can’t build a metaverse without user-generated content. You can’t build a metaverse without social interaction. You can’t build a metaverse without some sort of financial token that allows people to build a world.

– Tilia Director (and Linden Lab Executive Chairman) Brad Oberwager to Dean Takahashi in Gamesbeat

He further noted that in strengthening Tilia’s ability to provide these services to platforms, J.P. Morgan Payments are helping to both fuel new economies that directly benefit creators participating in them, allowing such economies to step away from the route of revenue generation through the invasive use of data farming and advertising.

“This is a good thing when creators can make money. There are people around the world who make their living by building things in Second Life …  Here’s why I think it’s so important: these universes are social economies. If you don’t allow people to make money, if you don’t allow this economy to happen, if you don’t support creators, you’re going to have to rely on an advertising model to make your world work. That is a disaster. That would be the worst thing that could hit our society — an advertising-based metaverse.

– Tilia Director Brad Oberwager to Dean Takahashi in Gamesbeat

A great strength with Tilia is that it utilises virtual tokens rather than blockchain-powered crypto-currencies. This means that it is better placed to offer day-to-day virtual currency stability. Crypto-currencies are all too often treated as a speculative securities; they are therefore vulnerable to market volatility, going up and down in value by the day. Such volatility can potentially damage the foundations of any social economy using them.

Add to this Tilia now having such a well-regarded name within the financial markets / payments environment as a strategic partner further enhances Tilia’s standing and reputation – with Oberwager noting that new clients are already “lining up”. At the the same time, the partnership provides J.P. Morgan Payments with access to a market sector that might otherwise prove difficult to access.

More on the partnership can be found in the links below: