Wirex expands crypto lineup to 130 tokens
Payment and crypto wallet provider Wirex has listed 52 new tokens on their app, bringing the total number of supported digital assets to 130, alongside 13 fiat currencies.
Wirex said its single largest release of tokens in one go provides 5 million customers with straightforward access to the benefits of DeFi.
Tokens featured include CAKE, BRZ, BBTC, IMX, YGG, PLA, RNDR, CHR, and GMT, and will be supported on blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Avalanche, Tron, Algorand, Optimism, Polygon, Stellar, Cosmos and Near.
Wirex’s digital payments platform allows users to buy, hold, exchange and sell these tokens. Linked to their crypto-enabled debit card, they can be spent at over 90 million locations worldwide and earn up to 8% Cryptoback rewards.
Pavel Matveev, CEO and Co-Founder of Wirex, commented: “We want our customers to fully experience the advantages of Web3. Combined with our industry leading UX, we’ve enabled access to some of the most popular dApps and tokens such as NEAR. This will give users the flexibility to easily use this new generation of the internet how they want.”
Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR Foundation, said: “This partnership is an important step towards helping us achieve our vision of bringing Web3 to a wider audience. Wirex has built a strong and loyal customer base which we can leverage and introduce to the limitless potential of NEAR and the creators of Web3.”
Wirex resumed its operation in the UK back in June, nearly three months after it threw in the towel on getting approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Wirex was back to serve British customers following discussions with the UK regulator, it said in a blog post.
The London-based cryptocurrency and fintech firm had been part of the FCA’s temporary register. Although this status allows it to operate in the UK while awaiting a final decision from the watchdog, it abruptly halted UK signups in March. The decision to temporarily stop onboarding Britons was apparently voluntary.
However, Wirex, which claims to have 250,000 UK customers, didn’t withdraw its application altogether following consultation with the jurisdictional regulator.
The company offers a mechanism to spend, receive and purchase cryptocurrency via a prepaid debit card. The platform currently supports over 50 altcoins which can be readily converted to euros, dollars, and pounds at point-of-sale via an in-app API.
Earlier in 2019, Wirex secured an E-money License from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, which allows the Fintech firm to freely operate in 23 countries from the European Union.
Only 32 cryptocurrency-related companies are currently registered with Britain’s financial regulator. However, there are dozens of other crypto firms registered under the Temporary Registration Regime list. Uphold itself was listed on the FCA’s temporary crypto-asset business register.
