Singaporean fintech company SafePal has recently invested in Swiss bank Fiat24 and together they have introduced a crypto Visa card and in-app banking service. The default deposit currency for this service is US Coin (USDC).
The announcement, made on March 7, stated that this feature will be available on version 4.5.0 of the SafePal mobile wallet, pending approval from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. Yang Lan, co-founder of Fiat24, explained that unlike regular Visa cards, transactions made with USDC on Arbitrum provide a transparent and immutable ledger, allowing faulty transfers to be reversed with the banking system.
Veronica Wong, CEO and co-founder of SafePal, further elaborated on the service, stating that after users create a USDC mobile wallet, they can transfer funds to accounts in traditional financial institutions. Users can also exchange cryptocurrencies across more than 40 blockchains into their bank accounts and use fiat currencies such as the US dollar, euro, or Swiss Franc for transactions and expenses. The developers of SafePal emphasized that their platform currently operates as a self-custody wallet and boasts approximately 10 million users worldwide.
Veronica Wong previously highlighted that the adoption of self-custody solutions has been accelerated by the malpractices of centralized platforms. She believes that this surge of interest in self-management for assets will continue to strengthen its adoption, rather than being a temporary trend.
The popularity of self-custody wallets has been on the rise since the collapse of centralized finance entities like FTX and Celsius. In December 2023, Jack Dorsey’s Block launched a self-custody wallet solution accessible in over 95 countries. Similarly, in August 2023, BitKeep, a cross-chain wallet, changed its name to Bitget Wallet after securing a $30 million investment from the exchange to expand its multichain swap platform.
For those interested in setting up and creating an Ethereum wallet, related information is available.