Singaporean fintech company SafePal has invested in Swiss bank Fiat24 and together they have launched a crypto Visa card and in-app banking service, with US Coin (USDC) as the default deposit currency.
According to an announcement made on March 7, this feature will be available on version 4.5.0 of the SafePal mobile wallet, pending approval from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. Yang Lan, co-founder of Fiat24, stated that unlike typical Visa cards, the transactions on [USDC] Arbitrum are conducted on-chain, providing a transparent and immutable ledger. While faulty transfers can be reversed with their banking system, the transactions remain transparent.
Veronica Wong, CEO and co-founder of SafePal, explained that once users create a USDC mobile wallet, they can send funds to accounts at traditional financial institutions. Additionally, users can exchange cryptocurrencies across more than 40 blockchains and use fiat currencies like the US dollar, euro, or Swiss Franc for transactions and expenses. The developers of SafePal further emphasized these features.
SafePal currently functions as a self-custody wallet and claims to have around 10 million users worldwide. After the crypto winter of 2021-2022, Veronica Wong, the CEO, expressed to Cointelegraph that the malpractice of centralized platforms has spurred the adoption of self-custody solutions. This surge of interest is not expected to be temporary, but rather a significant driving force behind the adoption of self-management for assets.
Since the collapse of centralized finance entities such as FTX and Celsius, self-custody wallets have gained popularity. On December 7, 2023, Jack Dorsey’s Block launched a self-custody wallet solution available in over 95 countries. On August 10, 2023, cross-chain wallet BitKeep changed its name to Bitget Wallet after securing a $30 million investment from the exchange to expand its multichain swap platform.
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