Coinbase Launches Visa Debit Card for EU & UK

Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has launched a new product for its customers in the United Kingdom and the European Union – a Visa debit card. Now, Coinbase users can spend their cryptos directly from their wallets without having to convert them to fiat currencies first.

Instant Currency Conversion

Coinbase published this new development via a blog post on April 10, stating that its new product, the Coinbase Card, would allow its customers to spend cryptocurrencies such as BTC (Bitcoin), ETH (Ether), LTC (Litecoin), and so on as easily as they would money from their bank.

Customers would now be able to use this card to pay for all their daily purchases, like booking tickets and paying for meals.

The Coinbase Card, said the exchange, would support all the cryptos that are traded on its platform. Coinbase also said that it would immediately convert cryptos to fiat currencies when customers used their debit cards, so that it would be an effortless and seamless transaction.

The exchange also said that while crypto-debit cards existed, users had to pre-load these cards with cryptocurrency in order to use them.

According to a Coinbase spokesperson, the issuer of the new debit cards is a UK-based payments processor – PaySafe Financial Services Ltd.

Coinbase Card App

In the same blog announcement, Coinbase said that it had released the Coinbase Card app for both Android as well as iOS operating systems. This app would link to users’ Coinbase accounts and allow them to choose which wallet they wanted to use to fund their new debit card.

Added to that, the Coinbase Card app would also provide access to instant receipts, spending categories, transaction summaries as well as a host of other features.

Coinbase stated that the first 1,000 customers would not have to pay the card issuance fee of £4.95 (~$6.48).

At this point, this new product is only available for customers in the UK, but the company plans to add support for the product to European Union nations in the near future.

Other Developments in the Debit Card Space

Last month, 2gether, a banking startup, announced that it was launching a pre-paid Visa debit card that would allow customers to spend cryptos. This card, called the 2gether Card, would let customers pay for their purchases either in Euros or in one of seven cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, EOS and Litecoin).