Over the past several years, I’ve witnessed an incredible opportunity unfold. People’s online and offline lives have evolved, and the walls between them are more dynamic than ever before. People are building identities, societies, and economies online that mirror but don’t exactly match their offline lives. In the past, you might have had an online identity that you tucked away when you closed your computer, but now, people are building businesses and livelihoods through their online personas. Content creators are building empires around their handles and stage names, and developers who are known only by their avatars are making a living selling virtual goods and services in online gaming worlds. This shift has exposed a gap in the payments ecosystem: How do you facilitate trusted, regulated payments at scale when you don’t know the real person on the other side?

"Today’s payments infrastructure was built for traditional commerce."

Today’s payments infrastructure was built for traditional commerce – it hasn’t caught up with the new way of living and working in a digital, creator-driven economy. It’s easy to pay money into any platform, and with some 1099 paperwork, get paid by one. But this approach limits the transaction between the user and the platform. Furthermore, paying creators directly requires users to move off-platform and into gray-market territory where transactions aren’t protected and real-world identity is exposed. Users are putting themselves at risk and platforms are losing out on payments that their ecosystem helped generate.

This is exactly the problem that Tilia was built to solve. Our payments platform was designed to make it easy for money to move throughout any digital economy – from user to user, user to creator, or creator to their collaborators – in a way that is simple, flexible, and regulated so your financial interests are protected. At Tilia, we have a massive opportunity to unlock new revenue streams for both online creators and the platforms they build in, whether they are gaming worlds, social platforms, or next generation marketplaces. This is why I’m expanding my role at Tilia from executive chairman to CEO, in order to accelerate the incredible work the team has already been doing to build the trusted payments platform for digital economies.

"[Tilia is] still just scratching the surface of what’s possible."

I’ve had the honor of being a part of Tilia’s evolution from a payments platform powering Second Life’s $650M economy to an independent business signing customers spanning gaming worlds and metaverses, NFT marketplaces, and other UGC-based social platforms. But we’re still just scratching the surface of what’s possible, which is why today I’m happy to share that Tilia has raised a total of $22M in strategic funding, with Seoul-based fintech leader Dunamu joining existing investor J.P. Morgan Payments. This funding will help us continue to grow our team and rapidly scale our platform to meet the growing customer demand, which now includes companies such as mod.io and Upland, among many others.

Joining us to help lead the team through this next phase of growth is tech and payments industry veteran Catherine Porter, who is our new Chief Business Officer. With more than two decades of experience, there is no one better suited for this role than Catherine as she’s previously led global partnerships and fintech innovation at Meta, including building the Diem ecosystem and traditional payments ecosystem for all Meta products worldwide. She has an unparalleled track record working at category-leading companies including OpenTable, LinkedIn, Google, and Oracle, and we’re proud to have her on the team.

Today there are countless gaming worlds, creator platforms, social commerce and other digital social worlds that are being constrained by old payments rails. I believe that at Tilia, we can unlock the full potential of every digital economy and help them truly thrive. We have the right team, partners, and technology to make this a reality, and it’s just the beginning. If you’d like to join us on our mission, check out our careers page.