JAKARTA – Payment giant Visa is moving ahead with its commitment to digital currency adoption by agreeing to issue a new Bitcoin (BTC) debit card in Australia.
Sydney-based crypto spending app CryptoSpend announced on Wednesday, July 14 that Visa has approved the issuance of physical debit cards that will allow Australians to spend their Bitcoins at local merchants.
The co-founder of CryptoSpend said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review that the new card will be issued by local payments firm Novatti and is expected to hit the market in September 2021. Visa is expected to announce its approval this weekend.
According to the report, the upcoming crypto debit card will allow users to spend a set of major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether (ETH), XRP and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The crypto holdings of the users will be kept by BitGo.
CryptoSpend co-founder Andrew Grech said the card would provide Australians with a way to cash out their Bitcoin profits instead of selling the cryptocurrency.
“Spending it outright is a more convenient way to sell it. If the market is green, one could say it's time to spend some of my profits. On the other hand, others may say it will continue to rise, I will hold on to it. But we've seen more volume spending as prices go up," Grech said.
According to Financial Review, Visa has approved issuance of crypto spending cards in Australia for some global crypto exchanges such as Binance, but it is not yet available in the country. Crypto exchange Crypto.com also received approval to become a direct issuer of Visa debit cards in Australia and is preparing to launch crypto cards soon.
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