MoonPay builds out celeb concierge service with Meta hire

MoonPay is building out its celebrity non-fungible token (NFT) concierge service following a quiet rollout last year, according to two announcements from new hires joining the team.

Former associate director at Standard Chartered Bank, Charlotte Laborde joined MoonPay in February as strategy lead to the COO. On Tuesday she updated her job title on LinkedIn to concierge manager. Justin Johnson, who held a role as creator partnerships lead for North America at Meta, has also announced joining the team.

The Block first reported on the existence of a beta version of MoonPay’s concierge service late last year, when the company described it as a “white glove service for high net worth individuals who want to purchase NFTs in the simplest way without all the hassle of setting up a wallet, buying crypto, using that crypto to purchase an NFT and then taking custody of it.”

The increased emphasis on hiring new people for the service demonstrates MoonPay's designs on the NFT market and a move away from its core business model of crypto onramp infrastructure for payments. 

Previous clients of the service include TV host Jimmy Fallon and rapper Post Malone. 

MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright told The Block in December 2021 that Post Malone offered the company the chance to sponsor his upcoming music video after it helped him acquire his first Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT. Soto-Wright described the concierge as “creating a really cool cultural conversation.”

Jimmy Fallon also mentioned purchasing an NFT on-air using MoonPay shortly after his own ape purchase. MoonPay was then mentioned a second time on his show in January during a segment with Paris Hilton.

But the company’s links to celebrities don’t stop there. MoonPay’s courting of celebrities continued into April when its latest funding round saw almost $87 million in investment from a star-studded list of celebs including Justin Bieber, Bruce Willis, Paris Hilton and Matthew McConaughey.

Its clients' penchant for getting in on the craze as quickly as possible has led to its concierge service overpaying for popular NFTs. According to calculations by The Block in March, MoonPay paid on average an additional 26% for Bored Ape NFTs relative to the collection’s floor price.