Fiat24 card offers crypto payments and Swiss banking

0:01I'm ashon Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews We have blockchain babe with us to talk about crypto debit cards and payments with crypto in the real world uh thank you so much blockchain babe for coming on the show thanks a lot for having me you're very welcome I'm excited to dive into this because I feel like it's a topic that a lot of people are

0:24interested in they're looking for ways to spend their crypto conveniently and I there have been many different solutions I'm not sure if any of them have been perfect and hit the nail on the head I've tried a few of them I know that you have a lot of expertise with it as well so I'm excited to dive into uh the discussion um some of the ones that I have tried and also have seen in the

0:44past are you know the crypto.com card there there's there was a coinbase card there was the Fiat 24 card there's a binance card and there's probably a few other ones that I don't think they got very popular but there's been quite a few and some of the big names have got C cards now and they're making it more convenient um so I know that you have a lot of expertise with this you've

1:06probably used some of the ones that I mentioned maybe you can talk a little bit about the cards that you've used uh and then we can dive into the positives the negatives and you know what's sort of the end all be solution yeah so you're right I mean the perfect solution is very hard to find and I think it depends on many things like where you live what do you want to use it for your

1:28expectations of the card and I do know a fair amount about the cards that you mentioned so I'm happy to share a little bit about each and which one I personally use so I think coinbase has been around the card has been around since 2019 at first it was available in the UK and Europe and the US like they've added it more recently um it's a debit card so

1:54that when you make a purchase with a card they convert the crypto in your wallet to fiat currency um I think it's really well known at this point but from what I've read um the main drawback of this card is the 2.49% crypto conversion fee maybe it's been updated but the last time I read it was this amount I think this fee is just so high it kind of makes it almost

2:20pointless to spend your crypto because um you know many crypto reward options only pay 1% back so you're technically losing money by spending crypto in in this case so this card is really only good if you spend USD or usdc but yeah I mean there are some issues with the coinbase card um I would say also for binance sadly as we've all

2:49read in the news uh it's no longer offering its Visa debit card in Europe they found themselves increasingly isolated from the traditional Financial system we we know a got cut off from the US banking system in February and then lost the ability to accept some Bank transfers in Australia in May and then over the summer it shut down binance connect which allowed businesses to

3:14accept crypto via visa and MasterCard and also MasterCard and Visa decided to terminate their cryptocard Partnerships with binance because yeah there was just like this increasing regulatory scrutiny um and the crypto.com card I mean I would say that it's also not ideal because in order to unlock the most value from their card you need to stake

3:40Crow um their basic card doesn't have much in the way of benefits so you're not only need to stake crypto for 180 days you need to keep it staked to keep most of the card benefits I guess it's not a big deal if you're comfortable staking Crow and you understand that the price will fluctuate but if you don't want to invest in it then it's not really the card for you it's a prepaid

4:05debit card and that also comes with its own set of issues um also you know the crypto.com card um requires you to leave your assets in other people's pockets because it's a CX so that's something that's becoming less and less appealing to many users and I think I'll talk about that later but personally what I use is the f 24 card um I used it for daily spending

4:33like to buy my lunch to buy Starbucks and yeah I'll be happy to say more about it later I'm sure it will come up very cool and thank you for detailed explanation on all of those cards I have seen I did see the news with binance in that and they're cut seems like everyone's cutting them off uh and it it sucks when you know you sort of chosen a card and you think okay now I can use it

4:56and then and then it gets cut off uh visa and MasterCard and all these guys um so and I think they've run into a little bit of regulatory issues in not just one jurisdiction but but many so um that that's sucks to hear but I guess you know that's um the way it goes and we'll see if there's more options available and uh for for the coinbase card as well you mentioned about the

5:17fees I think part of the reason why people want to use these crypto debit cards is that they're trying to get rid of at least the credit card fees of 2 to 3% that normally are charged and if they're charging the same then what's the point right so that that that's crazy um and I I did personally also use the crypto.com card that you mentioned I did stake some cro tokens and uh if you

5:44want to get bigger cards you have to stake a lot and that doesn't make any sense compared to a traditional credit card because yeah normally you know cards are free and they're giving you a ton of credit and in this case you have to stake few thousand dolls and then yeah the the the coin didn't have very good liquidity and honestly if you got the card when the market was hot then

6:06you stake the coins and all of a sudden you've lost a few thousand dollars because the coin went down and they did actually do some funny business with switching the coin to a new coin and not giving you the proper exchange rate and stuff and I think a lot of people got burned on it and overall was not worth going into the card at all um because it just you're losing money overall I I

6:28personally I've looked I've know about the Fiat 24 card I haven't used it myself um but it's good to know that you're using it as the main card um and I'm curious on sort of these issues that you've spoken about with the other cards the the the fees the the Partnerships being revoked um the staking things like that uh what is the case for the Fiat 24

6:51card in does it have to go with all those through all of those issues or um how exactly has it been for you using it yeah so I would say there are a couple of points the first one is that unlike the binance card and other exchange cards like these centralized exchange related cards the Fiat 24 account is a Swiss offshore bank account and actually the card is just one of the features

7:18that you get when you open an account because more importantly your account is connected with a Swiss and sepa settlement payments so legally it's like equivalent to having a UBS or a credit Swiss bank account even though credit Swiss doesn't exist anymore but um that's the first point and secondly um I really like the way that I can open the Fiat 24 ebanking portal in

7:44any non-custodial wallet which means I'm not tied to or limited to a specific platform um the concept also is really different they're trying to be the Fiat layer for the defi ecosystem like in terms of infrastructure So currently if we look the defi ecosystem is completely disconnected from the Fiat world you know CI has only limited link to the Fiat world this is mainly because defi

8:14projects exist in the form of a protocol and in the legal form of a dow so traditional financial institutions cannot really serve defi projects in any way so I think that the point is like to have this kind of defi solution like web 3 ready to serve the defi ecosystem in a native way is really important and that's what I'm trying to say is like Beyond just the card is like the concept

8:42and what they're trying to do is far more interesting than the other cards we mentioned before huh that's very cool uh about the the Switzerland I think a lot of people that have at least been in finance for a while know that you know every wealthy person wants to have a Swiss bank account um so to sort of double up on that is is very cool um and I I'm

9:07curious though about you know I know in Swiss they use uh Franks or there's other European currencies does it still work with USD and are there restrictions on where you can use it to pay well the card is a Visa card and is readily accepted in more than $4 million Merchants worldwide like online and offline so it's just like any other Visa

9:35card and just like every other Swiss bank offers multicurrency accounts um it's the same with Fiat 24 the only special part of the Fiat 24 account is that it can be topped up by selling crypto and by crypto I mean to say any token that has a liquidity pool on Unis swap because as far as I understand you know Fiat 24 uses Unis swap to convert any token into a stable

10:03coin and then once they get the stable coin they top up your Fiat 24 account so I mean yeah there's a pretty global payment solution in that sense that's very cool because I know a lot of these other cards they they they either want you to top up with just a stable coin or or Bitcoin or something so sort of make it easier if you're one of those people

10:25that have a lot of altcoins to not have to go through extra steps before beforehand uh that's always nice um and in terms of the getting access to it you know let's just say you know you've had bad experiences with the other cards you want to get set up how easily or quickly did you get started using the card well so currently the card is available for people who live in the EA

10:52in Switzerland but in q1 of next year there are plans to expand to other Regents um but yeah it's pretty simple so the cool thing is that to open an account it is really web three you don't have to do anything to do with like a password or email login but it's all replaced with an nft so you just have to Mint the Fiat 24 nft which is free to do and that just serves like to identify

11:23all the people in the ecosystem it's a utility nft and then you just pass a few simple kyc steps like three steps like to like verify your identity your address and yeah just a few like basic questions and after that if you are a resident in the country in a country where it's available you don't have to do anything it just you will see like the card in

11:49your account so I would say it's pretty fast and simple yeah that that's really cool and that's nice I I haven't heard of any of these other cards actually giving you an nft or tying it to an nft at all um although I have seen some nft projects that have different tiers or Rarities and maybe the nft goes up in value um are all of the nfts the same or are there different premium nfts

12:16premium cards yeah so there are different uh nfts there are some that you could purchase and that give you further benefits although to I don't think that for now the premium card is available yet but I think it will be soon and of course it will have like higher transaction limits and lower fees but for now it's not available but of course you can there are people who are trading

12:46the Fiat 24 nfts on openc and there are ones that are selling but you can also get it for free if you want H and and when you go to Starbucks to purchase your coffee and you're using the the Fiat 24 card are you using it on your phone through like the Google pay or do you actually have a physical card and you pay how does how does that work yeah so there is no physical card it's just

13:11digital but I feel like that's I mean a lot better anyway so it's just in my Apple pay so if I realize that my you know like I don't have that much money in my in my card I just open up the account my Fiat 24 account and I sell my ethereum or my ARB token or my wrapped Bitcoin whatever I have and it's

13:38immediately converted into euros and then I can just spend it so it's all really fast and it's all through my metamask so that's pretty cool that's very cool and in in terms of the uh the you mentioned at the beginning about coinbase charging a lot and and and these other ones sort of having issues are they charging less I would assume than than at least coinbase uh or or

14:04what are you know are there any High exorbitant fees with the card that you have to pay well the to get the card is free to open the account is also free and for now there's 1% on uh crypto topups okay but yeah I mean otherwise I think it's pretty competitive that's very cool and um I feel like is a good time to sort of set this up for the future so mainly for the

14:33European people but people in North America and I'm guessing in the States you know there's always with bances extra steps and things like that so what you're saying is for people that aren't in the EA right now they will be getting that in hopefully the next quarter or leading to the next B I mean we want to be more there are plans to make it more global to bring it to more people around

15:01the world okay sounds great and what do you think are the main reasons that all of these other cards have have had issues and and that the Fiat 24 card at least yet hasn't had any issues do do you think it's Switzerland um or you know starting Europe I'm pretty sure the other ones did not start there that seems like an advantage but what do you think are the sort of the main issues

15:28yeah I think there are three major challenges first of all cryptocurrencies as we speak today they still exist in a regulatory gray area in many countries around the world um and I think that crypto debit card providers have to navigate this complex web of regulations and licenses and it also varies really differently from one jurisdiction to another so to be able to

15:54be compliant is still an ongoing challenge uh the second second one I see is that I think like we said before there's a lot of these crypto debit cards which charge transaction fees like for crypto to Fat conversions withdrawals or purchases that can be quite High it kind of erodes the benefit of spending the crypto in the first place and finally I think yeah just the

16:20integration with traditional Banking and Financial systems are not it's just not there yet you know so when you have a crypto debit card it kind of requires users to manage multiple accounts and they may not offer features like direct deposit or bill payments or earning interest on deposits the Trad world I feel is still quite hostile to crypto and as you know yourself crypto

16:48people they have like a really different mindset than tradify people I think it will take time before we can get along and work together so those are like the major issues that I see yeah no that that's a great point and I think you know looking from the crypto person mindset I think it's great what you're saying that if you just whip up your metamask and you have arbitrum token or

17:13some other tokens you don't have to go through all these steps to start adding it into the card and you know say you want to get your coffee in 5 seconds you realize your your balance is low um that makes it really easy and uh I'm not in the EA myself but I'm going to be following along to check out when I can get the card for the people that are in

17:30those jurisdictions do they go through a mobile app or do you just go to the website is there a best way for them to get the card quickly yeah so because we have a Dap You can um just open it via any browser on your mobile phone or if you want to directly you can open whichever crypto wallet you like best and use their native browser just to go to a.fat 24.com and there's a generator

18:03so you can generate an account and it's just as simple as that I think it's actually quite intuitive to be honest I think it kind of leads you step by step to what you should be doing and also there's a like on Twitter and Discord I mean there are real people that you can talk to so that's awesome well I'm going to check it out I'm going to follow along for those updates uh for hopefully

18:29when it's available in in my country in next two months or so um and I'm going to I'm going to look at the recent news on it as well I'm going to put the links to the app for the people for the viewers that are available in that jurisdiction and also for the people that are in in my area to follow along in the near future here um and I appreciate your insights into having

18:52used all the cards what you're using right now I think there's a lot of people that are just looking for better Solutions you know they've had a card and all of a sudden it got cut off and it sucks um and sounds like this Swiss banking solution is one of the best as as it always has been for the past decades now moving into crypto um so yeah is there any um other comments that

19:14you have about these crypto debit cards and you know the best choices and where do you think they're going to be in the future yeah for sure I think after the FTX incident we can see that more people are moving away from CS into dexs like Unis swap um I think we've seen that people are starting to feel a bit uncomfortable putting their assets into other people's pockets and that they

19:40want more ownership so I think the prediction that I have is that there will only be more defi cards there already some out there like Fiat 24 um and I just think that's kind of the trend of how things are moving and where it's going yeah no I agree and I'm looking forward to it because uh dex's right now it's still has quite low adoption compared to the centralized

20:06exchanges but if I'm going to have a crypto debit card I'd rather have one that's that's tied to decentralized protocol rather than trusting binance or whoever you know sort of the ethos of blockchain and cryptocurrency is to stay in the decentralized world um so it's very cool I'm gonna I'm going to look into Fiat 24 I appreciate your insights uh into it all blockchain babe um and

20:32let's definitely follow up in uh the next few quarters and uh want to get your updated feedback on if you're still using the card uh and now when it expands out to the new jurisdictions and any other updates in in the crypto debit card world so thank you so much for your time and let's follow up in the near future thanks