Crypto app CryptoSpend announced Wednesday that Visa to issue a physical debit card that will allow Australians to spend their Bitcoin at local shops. Sydney-based digital assets startup gets approval from the global payment giant to release a spending card down under.
According to the Australian Financial Review, CryptoSpend co-founders said that the new card will be issued by major local payments company Novatti in September and is expected to become a market hit.
The upcoming crypto debit card will allow users to spend a set of major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), holding users’ crypto assets in BitGo.
Andrew Grech, a CryptoSpend co-founder, said that the card will give Australians a way to cash out their Bitcoin profits as opposed to selling the cryptocurrency.
“Spending it directly is a more convenient way of selling it,” he stated. “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.”
By the Financial Review’s report, 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.
Earlier this year, Visa settled a USDC transaction on its payment network. The move lays the groundwork to potentially support a digital dollar and other central bank digital currencies worldwide.
Before, Mastercard announced its new steps to support Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies on its payment network to make it easier for Mastercard customers to transact using secure digital currencies.