London-based mobile banking outfit Revolut is merging traditional day-to-day fiat spending with digital currencies, enabling customers to buy, sell, trade and hold cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin in 130 currencies in what the firm claims to be a world first.
Aiming to fill the void between digital currencies and old money, customers who have an debit card attached to their Revolut account can purchase goods in real time and have the funds deducted from their accounts in fiat or crypto. More importantly small transactions such as paying for groceries at the supermarket, parking etc are encouraged and work seamlessly at very reasonable rates.
Now, spending Bitcoin with a debit card is nothing new, firms such as Xapo, CEX and CryptoPay have been providing this for some time. The key difference with Revolut is that customers are now be able to tap into extremely low exchange rates resulting in ‘fee-free’ transactions with real exchange rates in over 130 currencies.
Revolut also removes the inconsistencies associated with Bitcoin/ fiat conversions which can be time consuming and expensive, particularly when the exchange is operating in other jurisdictions. These exchanges charge anywhere from 5 percent to 10 percent per transaction whilst Revolut offers a fixed fee of just 1.5 percent.
Revolut’s platform launch comes as Bitcoin continues to blow past ATH’s like $10,000, fight for its legitimacy in the eyes of mainstream users and governments and prepares for futures trading this month. With the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approving Bitcoin futures, cryptocurrencies has grown up considerably since their less stellar dark web days and with services like Revolut now available are ready for mass adoption.
“Despite being one of the hottest trends in the world right now, getting exposure to cryptocurrency has notoriously been time-consuming and expensive,” Storonsky writes.
Nikolay Storonsky, the CEO of Revolut said at this years Techcrunch Disrupt conference in Berlin that users will be able to access the new cryptocurrency trading features on the app from this Thursday.
The company has an excellent track record when it comes to saving customers millions on foreign exchange fees, citing more than $160 million in customer savings since launch. The app is currently servicing over 1,000,000 users in Europe and is growing exponentially and now the company ready to roll out its mobile banking to the masses.