According to the popular cryptocurrency news aggregator Bitcoin Archive, Visa and Near Pay, a Riyadh-based Saudi Arabian company specializing in digital payments, have reportedly launched a new Virtual Bitcoin card for citizens residing in Europe.
Via and Near Pay are now in partnership
💥BREAKING: Visa has launched a virtual #Bitcoin card across Europe in a partnership with NearPay.
— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) August 27, 2022
NearPay a few months ago launched its first virtual cryptocurrency card and mobile wallet for both iOS and Android.
NearPay Wallet: that is the name of the wallet already available on all digital platforms.
“With NearPay customers can buy crypto using credit card or a bank transfer, send, receive, and exchange it, or make withdrawals directly to their bank account. In addition to that, they can instantly issue a virtual Visa debit card which lets them spend crypto for online purchases with automatic conversion to fiat. The service is available to residents of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK.”
reads a blog post on the company’s website.
The wallet currently supports as many as 38 cryptocurrencies, including NEAR, BTC, ETH, and USDT.
Along with cryptocurrency payments and conversions, customers can make traditional bank transfers in EUR and GBP.
“At NearPay we have taken the best features of modern digital banking and brought them to the world of crypto to create a simple interface that makes managing all your finances, both fiat and crypto, easier than ever.”
said at the presentation of the new product Ivan Ilin, COO of NearPay.
“With our newly launched iOS and Android apps our customers can access NearPay Wallet on the go and instantly get virtual crypto cards to spend their assets without converting them in advance.“
Visa for its part has long been exploring and using cryptocurrencies to implement in its electronic payments circuit.
In November 2021 it launched with cryptocurrency lending specialist BlockFi, the first cryptocurrency credit card with a cashback program.
The same thing was done in July for Dubai and the UAE, where the Bitcoin Black card was launched with no worldwide spending limit and a cashback of 10% in SPND tokens.
According to a recent survey by Insider Intelligence, by 2022 payments made using cryptocurrencies will exceed $10 billion in total transaction value globally, while 60% of cryptocurrency owners would be interested in using cryptocurrencies as a payment method for their online purchases.
Visa itself fully confirmed these figures when it revealed at its quarterly presentation that its customers made $2.5 billion in payments with its cryptocurrency cards in the first fiscal quarter of 2022.
“To us, this signals that consumers see utility in having a Visa card linked to an account at a crypto platform. There’s value in being able to access that liquidity, to fund purchases and manage expenses, and to do so instantly and seamlessly.”
Vasant Prabhu, CFO of Visa, told CNBC.
