Inter-Continental Exchange to Acquire Bridge2 for Forthcoming Bakkt App

The Intercontinental Exchage, or ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, unveiled its plan to take over software service Bridge2 in order to roll out an app from Bakkt, ICE’s subsidiary. Bakkt’s app will list a series of assets and schemes such as loyalty rewards from several enterprises, even though the application will not use blockchain technology.

The representative explained that reward schemes such as coupons and loyalty points are not transferable outside the platform.

The representative further stated the assets cannot be moved out of the Bakkt environment.

“While all assets in the Bakkt app will be transferable to other Bakkt users within the app, those assets will not be tokenized on a blockchain or transferrable outside the Bakkt ecosystem.”

ICE aims to buy Bridge2 Solutions, which offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. After the takeover, Bakkt intends to gain access to Bridge2 from ICE, holding company of Bakkt, capitalizing on the SaaS platform for its forthcoming client application.

Bakkt intends to use the capital amassed from Series B funding to takeover Bridge2 from ICE. The firm further revealed that the funding round will get over in the months to come.

After much expectation, ICE unveiled its regulated Bakkt crypto asset trading platform in September 2019, boasting about physically settled Bitcoin futures trading. After few months, Bakkt started offering Bitcoin options trading on its platform.

Moving forward with its expansion plans, Bakkt is involved in the creation of a consumer app that offers a series of features, including cryptocurrency payments and trading. Bakkt intends to incorporate a client loyalty program in the app via its Bridge2 buyout.

Bridge2, being a software provider, assists in developing digital loyalty schemes for enterprises, including employee incentives, digital coupons and client loyalty points.

The media release further states that Bridge2 “powers programs for seven of the top ten financial institutions and 4,500 loyalty, incentive and employee perk programs for companies across a wide spectrum of industries.”

Utilizing Bridge2’s professionalism, Bakkt prefers its consumer app to have a wide spectrum of real life use scenario.

Bakkt CEO, Mike Blandina, explained the benefits of Bakkt app through a media release:

“With the launch of the Bakkt app, we will, for the first time, offer consumers a robust platform to consolidate and use all of their digital assets, from crypto to loyalty points to in game tokens, in one user-friendly wallet.”

As per details handed over to Fortune, Bakkt intends for high benefit of its latest app. User of Bakkt app can utilize client rewards, loyalty points, coupons from several enterprises as cash, combined as single amount in Bakkt’s app.

In another expansion attempt, ICE also got in touch with eBay, bidding more than $30 billion for the e-commerce giant. ICE and eBay are not in discussing the matter officially at this point in time.