Uphold has acquired Cortex MCP, a leading mobile commerce and authentication company, as it strives to strengthen its digital money platform with secure payment applications.

In addition, Uphold will also acquire Cortex's patent portfolio and immediately start working on new IP solutions with an emphasis on authentication, tokenization, and blockchain-centric solutions. With these solutions, it would be able to further extend its market leadership in expanding new innovative services in payment, acceptance, and identification for its growing user base and merchants across the globe.

"Cortex's mobile centric, closed loop payment and secure tokenization solutions provide industry leading technologies and security to our platform," said William Dennings, COO of Uphold. "It additionally brings new commercial offerings and opportunities to our enterprise division, Uphold Solutions."

In its media release, Uphold said that the acquisition will, in particular, enable

• “A new Uphold payments capability that leverages both crypto and FIAT assets;
• A new closed-loop payment platform expansion, leveraging Uphold's remittance and transfer capabilities in Mexico, Latin America, and beyond;
• New digital ID/authentication capabilities and services;
• Additional security solutions that further secure Uphold members' accounts.”

With this acquisition, Cortex's founder Shaunt Sarkissian will head up Uphold's payments team.

This acquisition comes on the heels of Uphold's announcement of a $57.5 million partnership with former Ripple executive, Greg Kidd, to increase the company's connectivity to financial systems.