Could buying a meal with Bitcoins be as simple as swiping a card?
That is the goal of a startup in Singapore.
TenX is a startup in Singapore that is pitching it's debit card as way of transacting and instantly converting digital currencies into fiat.
As of right now the company can convert from virtual currencies into dollars, yen, and euros.
Currently it is able to convert 8 digital currencies, but there are plans to include many more.
How does it work?
The company has built an app that serves as a digital wallet which is then connected to their Visa debit card. The card can then be swiped at a restaurant or any local merchant. Once swiped, the merchant is paid in the local currency while the users account gets debited.
The company said that it takes a 2% fee from each transaction.
Currently they have received orders for more than 10,000 cards from would be users. The transaction amount per year is capped at only $2000 USD, unless certain verification procedures are met.
Which is a good thing as something like this could be a haven for money laundering.
However, once verification procedures are met, the limit is increased multiples of that.
This is yuge!
This could be exactly the kind of thing that virtual currencies need to spring board them into the next phase of adoption.
Mati Greenspan, an Isreali-based analyst, agrees:
"It's an incredible concept."
"At the end of the day it's going to depend a lot on customer relations. Are they meeting the customers expectations or can somebody else do it better?"
There you have it, if customers want it and start to indicate that there is a demand for it, either TenX or someone else is going to figure out how to best get it done.
TenX currently does about $99,000 USD worth of transactions per month. The goal at the end of 2018 is to do about $99 million USD in monthly transaction and have over 1 million users.
Is this the future?
So far TenX is the first mover, but you can be sure that many more are soon to join the space, especially if any kind of demand is shown for the service.
Major financial institutions with deep pockets and very good connections are sure to be hot on their heels if this thing takes off.
Either way, this can only be good news for Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto space. User adoption is really the missing ingredient to fully take these things main stream.
Stay informed my friends!
Sources:
Image Sources:
https://www.ethnews.com/card-innovation-to-let-users-spend-ether-as-cash-at-outlets
https://twitter.com/tenxwallet
https://cryptojl.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/tenx-ico-sold-out-in-8-minutes/
Follow me: @jrcornel
Amazing post! I think one day very soon we will see something like this be main streemed. I think in the near future as well!
TenX is revolutionary and they are going all the way. It will be huge. Visa and Mastercard are on board. People who own PAY TenX tokens will earn a share of .05% of all transaction fees card holders incur forever. I traded my TenX Pay coins for Bitcoin the other day just before the price of pay jumped. What a bummer. Oh well. Buy when it's low.. and I'd say sell when it's high but with TenX you may want to hold it.
BitPay Competitor (2% fee instead of 3%)... someday it will be 0%, just wait for it... its a matter of time! Competition is amazing on the open source world.
This is the logical next step
everyone already has a card
and just having another one pretty much solves all issues people have with cryptos
ive tried paying before with bitcoin in a store, it was basically both me and the owner fumbling with our phones getting QR codes to load as we held them near each other so they could scan the image, and then wait 45 awkward seconds for confirmation
cards that can be swiped would solve all these issues
Agreed. It is somewhat a combination of the old financial world and the coming one. :)
Many of this debt cards are popping up, and will make spending coins cheap and easy. Soon even the avg joe will be using bitcoin!
Oh damn! This is the beginning of cryptos pushing over fiat currencies
Yup! man this is going to be normal in future day good post keep sharing man :)
Nice now I have another option in cards! Tell me something how to do write so well, what is the secret because im trying to come up myself ya know and I seem to have hit a road block! heee kidding great information as usual full upvote and a RS.
Looks interesting
Do you know how this card stacks up to similar ones like Monaco and Wirex?
A project called Shift has already taken a stab at this idea and is very successful. Shift has been proven to be a very dependable tool to use to buy goods in fiat currencies by instantly converting Bitcoin. Shift connects with a Coinbase wallet and costs $10 USD up front for the card with no transaction fees. The only thing that needs to be improved upon is the lack of an EMV chip. Its exciting to see more projects to be created to give consumers more options!