Visa to approve Bitcoin spending card for Australian startup CryptoSpend

Published at: July 14, 2021

Global payment giant Visa is moving forward with its commitment to digital currency adoption by approving the issuance of a new Bitcoin (BTC) debit card in Australia.

Sydney-based crypto spending app CryptoSpend announced Wednesday that Visa has approved the issuance of a physical debit card that will allow Australians to spend their Bitcoin at local merchants.

CryptoSpend co-founders said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review that the new card will be issued by major local payments company Novatti and is expected to hit the market in September. Visa is expected to announce the approval later this week.

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). Users’ crypto holdings will be custodied by BitGo.

CryptoSpend co-founder Andrew Grech said that the card will give Australians a way to cash out their Bitcoin profits as opposed to selling the cryptocurrency, stating:

“Spending it directly is a more convenient way of selling it. If the market is green, someone could say it’s time to spend some of my profits. On the other side of the fence, another person might say it’s going to keep going up, I’ll hold onto it. But we have seen more spending volume when the price is going up.”

Related: Visa reports over $1 billion in crypto spending in H1 2021

According to the Financial Review, Visa has already approved the issuance of crypto spending cards in Australia for some global crypto exchanges like Binance, but they are not yet available in the country. Crypto exchange Crypto.com also received approval to be a direct issuer of Visa debit cards in Australia and is preparing to launch a card soon.

Visa did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

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