Bitcoins (Bitcoin, BTC) may have become the future of digital currency, but in almost all countries they have huge problems. And one of them is this: why use bitcoins if millions of merchants accept ordinary money?
Today, if you want to buy a bottle of Pepsi-Cola by paying with Bitcoins, you need to scan the QR code from your phone or send a long Bitcoin address to the seller by mail. For most people, payment with Bitcoins is much harder than using Visa or MasterCard.
Xapo, a company offering online wallets Bitcoin, claims that things can change in the next few months. In a few months, the first debit card will be released, which will allow you to spend bitcoins anywhere you accept Visa or MasterCard.
This is a sign of the growing maturity of Bitcoin and how digital currency is slowly integrating into the mainstream financial services industries. There is still a whole fleet of bitcoin startups ahead. Unlike other one-day companies that offer such cards, Xapo will be the first company to actually link a bitcoin online wallet with a card, and $ 20 million of funding is a very solid foundation.
Here is how it works. Xapo, the supplier of bitcoin wallets, as well as your bank, can issue you a debit card number and expiration date. Card number you get for free. To get a plastic card, you have to pay $ 15.
When using a Xapo card, the credit card number is checked by Xapo, approving or rejecting the transaction, depending on how many bitcoins are already in your wallet. The company then sells bitcoins on the Bitstamp exchange and pays the merchant like any other card issuer.
“You just need a card that you can use anywhere without restrictions,” says Wences Casares, Xapo founder.
You can already buy a prepaid gift card for Bitcoins, thanks to a company called Gyft. But Gyft cards work only with specific merchants - Amazon, Target, Dell and others. This is because the rules for using MasterCard or Visa cards are much more burdensome than the rules for using gift cards.
Gyft is a gift-based P2P service that “cannot guarantee that public-use cards will not be misused. The company would not risk offering such cards without being 100% sure of the legitimacy of its actions. ”
Xapo operates under US law, demanding proof of residency and identification from its customers before opening an account for them. Cazares says that his company is not yet sure which payment system will be used for the cards, but next in line are MasterCard, Visa and Discover.
The article is based on materials .
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