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Tilia was Linden Lab’s payments business for Second Life. In October 2022, it became a standalone company and announced a strategic investment from J.P. Morgan Payments to expand payment and payout services for virtual worlds, games and other digital platforms. The investment amount and ownership stake were not disclosed, and the deal was not a J.P. Morgan acquisition or a consumer-facing metaverse bank. Tilia later joined Thunes; Thunes now identifies the business as Thunes Financial Services LLC.
What Tilia did
Tilia’s story began inside Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life. Rather than build a payments business from scratch in 2022, Linden Lab separated an existing operation that had supported transactions in Second Life’s virtual economy. Tilia launched as a payments platform in 2019, according to contemporary reporting.
Second Life illustrates why that experience mattered. Its economy includes the Linden dollar, purchases of virtual goods and services, user-to-user payments, and mechanisms for moving value between virtual currency and U.S. dollars. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes Second Life as an example of a virtual world with both fiat-to-virtual and virtual-to-fiat payment on-ramps, and identifies Tilia as the licensed money transmitter associated with its U.S.-dollar balance (CFPB report, April 2024).
That made Tilia more than a concept aimed at a future metaverse. It was infrastructure developed for a live digital economy. The company described its offering as covering payment processing, in-world transactions and payouts to creators, including conversion of platform tokens into fiat currency such as U.S. dollars (Tilia’s October 2022 announcement).
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What “spun out” meant
The October 18, 2022 spinout meant Tilia was separated from Linden Lab as a standalone commercial company, able to offer its services to customers beyond Second Life. It did not mean the two businesses suddenly had no connection, nor that Tilia had been newly created. Linden Lab’s operating economy was its origin and an important example of the system it wanted to sell to other platforms.
The relationship remained consequential after the spinout. When Thunes announced its agreement to acquire Tilia in 2024, it also described a five-year partnership with Linden Research, Linden Lab’s parent, to continue payment processing and payouts for Linden Lab. Thunes’ current page says Tilia LLC was renamed Thunes Financial Services LLC and is now part of Thunes (Thunes acquisition announcement; Tilia transition page).
What J.P. Morgan invested in—and what is not public
J.P. Morgan Payments made a strategic investment in Tilia. The public announcement said the backing would help Tilia enhance its processing platform, add payment and payout methods and currencies, and expand support services. J.P. Morgan’s stated interest was in “contextualized commerce,” including virtual economies in games and virtual worlds (company announcement).
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The announcement did not disclose the investment amount, Tilia’s valuation, J.P. Morgan’s precise ownership percentage, or other specific terms such as a board seat or exclusivity. Calling the stake a minority investment is consistent with the deal’s description in coverage, but readers should not infer an exact percentage from that label.
In March 2023, Tilia said it had raised $22 million in total strategic funding. That round included existing investor J.P. Morgan Payments and new investor Dunamu, a South Korean fintech and crypto company. The $22 million was the total funding figure, not a disclosed J.P. Morgan check. Tilia also announced Brad Oberwager as CEO, Aston Waldman as CFO, and Catherine Porter as chief business officer (Tilia’s March 2023 announcement; TechCrunch coverage).
Nothing in those announcements means consumers could open a Tilia account through Chase, that J.P. Morgan bought Tilia, or that Tilia became a Chase product. The reported transaction was a strategic investment in a separate payments company.
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The payments problem behind the metaverse label
Most familiar checkout systems focus on a consumer paying a merchant. A platform economy can involve more directions of money movement: a user buys tokens; users pay one another; someone buys a creator’s digital item; a platform pays creators; creators pay collaborators; and a participant may seek to convert an in-platform balance into ordinary currency.
- Funding: A user pays dollars to a platform or payment provider to acquire a balance or virtual tokens.
- Spending: The user spends that balance on a digital good, service or another participant.
- Crediting: The platform records value for the creator or recipient, subject to its rules for fees, refunds and disputes.
- Payout: A recipient requests withdrawal, potentially across a border or in a different currency.
- Controls and settlement: The provider and platform handle identity checks, fraud and sanctions controls, payment settlement, currency conversion and relevant compliance obligations.
Tilia’s pitch was that a platform should be able to support these flows without sending users off-platform to separate consumer payment apps or treating every recipient as a conventional contractor just to make a payout. That was the company’s argument, as reported by TechCrunch, not a universal rule about how all platforms must classify or pay recipients.
For a bank, the strategic opportunity was not necessarily virtual reality itself. It was the prospect of payment services embedded in digital experiences where users buy, sell, earn and withdraw value. The investment could give J.P. Morgan exposure to a specialist operator with an existing product and operating history rather than requiring it to build an entire virtual-economy system internally. That is a reasonable interpretation of the strategic logic, not a disclosed investment term.
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Why virtual-economy payments are hard
The difficult work is largely behind the interface. If a provider handles balances, conversions or payouts, it may face obligations involving money transmission, identity verification and financial-crime controls. Platforms also have to contend with chargebacks, account takeovers, fake or manipulated transactions, refunds and disputes. A token that can be redeemed for cash raises different questions from a digital item that can only be used inside one game.
Licensing was a major part of Tilia’s proposition. Its executives told TechCrunch that obtaining money-transmitter licenses across U.S. states and territories took seven years and $35 million. Those are company-reported figures, not independently audited costs. Thunes said in its April 2024 acquisition announcement that Tilia was licensed in 48 U.S. states and territories at that time; that dated figure should not be treated as a current licensing count.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →There are trade-offs for platforms, too. A regulated specialist can spare a company from building some licensing and payout capabilities itself, but it can also become a critical dependency: the platform relies on the provider’s risk decisions, supported jurisdictions, payout rails, fees and operating continuity. International markets add local rules and payment methods. Small transactions create a separate economic challenge because fixed processing costs consume a larger share of a one- or two-dollar payment.
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What the historical scale figures show
In March 2023, TechCrunch reported that Tilia had more than 70 employees and cited company claims that it powered millions of transactions and supported Second Life’s roughly $650 million economy. Axios reported CEO Brad Oberwager’s estimate of about 1.6 million transactions a day with average transaction values of roughly $1 to $2 (Axios, March 2023). These are historical, attributed figures—not current operating metrics or proof that every virtual world could reach the same scale.
Still, the figures help explain the business case: payment infrastructure can be valuable even when individual purchases are small, if transaction volume is high and the system can manage collection, internal balances and payouts reliably. They also show why the operational model matters at least as much as the novelty of the virtual environment.
What became of Tilia
The key later development is that Tilia did not remain an independent startup. In April 2024, Thunes announced an agreement to acquire it. Thunes’ current transition page identifies Tilia LLC as Thunes Financial Services LLC, part of Thunes. Thunes describes its broader business as cross-border money movement, and its API documentation covers money transfers and collections (Thunes API documentation).
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The broad timeline is:
- 2019: Tilia launches inside Linden Lab, according to TechCrunch and Axios reporting.
- October 2022: Tilia spins out and announces a strategic investment from J.P. Morgan Payments.
- March 2023: Tilia reports $22 million in total strategic funding, adds Dunamu as an investor and announces leadership changes.
- April 2024 and after: Thunes announces its acquisition agreement; the business is subsequently identified as Thunes Financial Services LLC.
Why the deal mattered beyond virtual reality
“Metaverse payments” was a useful headline, but a narrow description of the market Tilia pursued. The same basic needs arise in online games, creator platforms, digital marketplaces and social commerce: collect money, attribute it to the right account, distribute earnings and, where permitted, let recipients withdraw. The underlying market is digital-economy payments, not exclusively immersive 3D worlds.
That does not mean every app needs a specialist like Tilia. A small developer with straightforward card sales may be able to use a conventional payment processor or marketplace product. A platform with user-to-user value transfers, creator earnings, redeemable tokens, large payout volumes or complex cross-border operations may have a stronger reason to consider regulated payments infrastructure. Its decision would depend on its jurisdictions, transaction sizes, payout needs, compliance model and tolerance for provider dependency.
Nor did Tilia’s Second Life experience prove that all metaverse businesses would thrive. It demonstrated that a long-running virtual world could sustain a substantial economy with payments and conversion needs. Whether other platforms could attract comparable activity—and make the economics work after compliance and processing costs—is a separate question.
Quick Recap
Sources
- Tilia’s October 18, 2022 announcement
- Tilia’s March 14, 2023 funding and leadership announcement
- TechCrunch’s March 2023 report
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report on video games and virtual worlds
- Thunes’ acquisition announcement and Tilia transition page
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