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MasterCard-Backed Revolut Enables Bitcoin for Cross-Border Payments

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Rebecca Campbell
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A London-based digital payments company is allowing its customers to buy, hold, and exchange bitcoin and other digital currencies through its mobile app.

Revolut, which provides a service to people enabling them to transfer money across borders with no fees, will now be able to access bitcoin, litecoin, and ethereum in a matter of seconds, alongside 25 of the world’s currencies. They can then hold the digital currencies within the app or transfer it to others with no fees involved.

Speaking at TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin conference , Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut’s CEO, announced that customers would be able to access this new service on Thursday, adding that:

Despite being one of the hottest trends in the world right now, getting exposure to cryptocurrency has notoriously been time-consuming and expensive.

 

This announcement comes at a time when the digital currency market is experiencing a surge in value as it continues to gain mainstream interest. Bitcoin’s value has shot up in recent months, hitting an historic high of over $12,000 yesterday, ahead of the bitcoin futures contracts launch. The combined market cap is now valued at $376.3 billion.

It is because of the cryptocurrency’s continued push to becoming more mainstream that Storonsky is of the opinion that digital currencies will soon become an integral part of the banking process. During the digital payment company’s week-long crypto beta test, he stated that 10,000 of its customers traded $1 million in digital currency.

He added:

Cryptocurrency exposure has consistently been the number one requested feature from our customers and so we listened and took action.

Last month, Revolut hit the one million user milestone, highlighting the company’s potential to attracting more customers during the full launch later this week.

For those who use Revolut’s card to make debit purchases, if they run out of fiat money what they have in cryptocurrency will automatically be calculated to take out what’s required. Storonsky stated that when the feature opens it will provide competitive rates. Unlike other platforms which charge between five and nine percent on hidden fees, Revolut are, reportedly, only going to charge a flat, up-front 1.5 percent to its customers without any other hidden fees involved.

Revolut, who uses UK-based bank Lloyds to process transactions and issues its customers with a MasterCard debit card, told the Financial Times , that both organisations were ‘comfortable’ with the move.

We wouldn’t be able to do it without their permission.

The digital currency transactions will be conducted via Bitstamp and GDAX, two prominent cryptocurrency exchanges.

Featured image from Shutterstock.