(Bloomberg) -- CryptoSpend, a startup digital-asset payment service in Australia, said it’s targeting a roughly fourfold increase in valuation in a funding round due to be completed over the next two months.

The company is seeking A$5 million ($3.5 million) in Series A investment at a valuation of about A$30 million to A$50 million, according to co-founders Richard Voice and Andrew Grech.

“This is the right time for us to go out and raise to scale and expand the business to meet the demand we are currently experiencing,” Chief Operations Officer Voice said in an interview Tuesday in Sydney. He added that the firm plans to launch in New Zealand this year. 

CryptoSpend started the first Australian native crypto Visa card in late 2021, which allows users to spend their virtual coins. The firm said revenues are up sixfold since the second quarter of last year, with the customer base now at about 17,000.

Raising funds has become tougher for digital-asset businesses after last year’s crypto rout and the contagion from the collapse of the FTX exchange. Venture-capital investments in Australia plunged by a third in 2022.

Grech said he expects the crypto regulatory review underway in Australia to bolster the credibility of the digital-asset industry.

“The crystal ball is probably some sort of licensing regime,” he said.

For crypto market prices: CRYP; for top crypto news: TOP CRYPTO. 

(Updates with more comments from Grech from penultimate paragraph.)

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