Singaporean Fintech Launches USDC-Powered Visa Card with Swiss Bank Fiat24

Singaporean fintech company SafePal has made an investment in Swiss bank Fiat24 and together they have launched a crypto Visa card and in-app banking service. The default deposit currency for this service is US Coin (USDC). The feature will be available on version 4.5.0 of the SafePal mobile wallet, pending approval from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The transactions made with the crypto Visa card are recorded on the blockchain, providing transparency and a secure ledger. Faulty transfers can be reversed through the banking system. Users can create a USDC mobile wallet and transfer funds to traditional financial institutions. They can also swap cryptocurrencies across more than 40 blockchains into their bank accounts and conduct transactions using fiat currencies like the US dollar, euro, or Swiss Franc. The bank accounts created on the SafePal mobile wallet are recorded on the Ethereum Layer 2 rollup Arbitrum as NFTs, ensuring secure and transparent transactions. The crypto Visa cards are linked to third-party payment platforms like Paypal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay for convenience. SafePal currently operates as a self-custody wallet and has around 10 million users globally. The CEO Veronica Wong believes that the adoption of self-custody solutions has been spurred by the malpractice of centralized platforms. Self-custody wallets have been gaining popularity since the collapse of centralized finance entities. In December 2023, Block launched a self-custody wallet solution that is available in over 95 countries. BitKeep, a cross-chain wallet, also changed its name to Bitget Wallet after securing a $30 million investment to expand its multichain swap platform.