Cryptocurrency Cards Use i2c Processing

More than 30 cryptocurrency companies are expected to provide products and services that link digital assets (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and others) to real-world spending through the Visa and Mastercard merchant acceptance networks by the end of 2021. Among those already in the market are Wirex, Apto Payments, Crypto.com and NetCents. All are clients of payment processor i2c.

Wirex provides over three million Mastercard cards linked to assets in a cryptocurrency wallet. It brought to market the first Bitcoin rewards card. The company is a direct issuer of Mastercard cards.

Apto Payments is a processor and value-added service provider focused exclusively on crypto companies that want to issue bank cards. Coinbase, which claims over 35 million customers worldwide, is an Apto client.

Crypto.com offers multiple financial services, including a Visa card, to over five million consumers.

NetCents, a money services business registered with Fintrac, is a hub for trading cryptocurrencies and a provider of the top crypto merchant gateway service.

Those four companies and i2c’s other clients link to the company through a single API to access a front-end and back-end service stack as well as account lifecycle management services worldwide.

All credit, debit and prepaid consumer and commercial card products processed by i2c use a single code, making integration to the company’s technology stack very simple and providing instant global reach.

U.K.-based Wirex has customers in 130 countries. Hong Kong-based Crypto.com has customers in Asia, 31 countries in Europe and the U.S. Apto’s Coinbase client offers Visa cards (it is a principal member of Visa) in 29 countries.

The appeal of i2c to crypto and other companies that offer card products around the world includes the fact that its authorization system has never gone down in the 19 years it has been in business.

The real-time conversion of crypto assets to fiat currency to facilitate spending at Visa and Mastercard network merchants is not a service provided by i2c.

However, that process is not any more complicated than fiat-to-fiat foreign exchange processing for multicurrency card accounts, which i2c provides for clients including CIBC in Canada and City National Bank, Payoneer and Brex in the U.S.

Other i2c customers include Comerica, Credit Sesame, Car IQ and Purewrist.

INTERVIEWED FOR THIS ARTICLE

Jim McCarthy is President at i2c in Redwood City, California, jmccarthy@i2c.com, www.i2cinc.com.

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