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Bitwage has announced the launch of new payroll cards in partnership with Xapo that will allow people to receive salary in bitcoins and spend it in dollars, pounds sterling, and euro. Xapo confirmed to CoinFox that the company teamed up with Bitwage and revealed that they have been working on the deal for a few months.

 

CoinFox contacted Fernando Gouveia, Business Development Manager at Xapo, to find out more about the company's outlook on the partnership. 

The most important benefit of the partnership for Xapo is to build a use case that provides an end-to-end solution, Gouveia told CoinFox.

“Whenever we talk about receiving salaries in bitcoin we always hear an argument made that Bitcoin is not widely accepted at merchants worldwide. We eliminate this problem altogether by allowing users to spend bitcoin and the merchant to collect in local currency.”

The new debit card allows employees to use the Bitwage system in order to withdraw and spend United States Dollars, European Euros, and British Pounds directly from the blockchain.  The partnership allows users to spend bitcoins in local currencies using the Xapo account at any merchant that accepts Visa cards.

“This relationship effectively completes the bitcoin payment cycle, allowing individuals to earn and spend bitcoin without ever touching fiat currency or using a traditional bank,” Xapo's press release reads. 

Gouveia revealed that the company made this move with a goal in mind to remind the bitcoin community of the Xapo current debit card program which is “alive and well”.

“We launched last July and have been doing a slow rollout to more than 95 countries since,” he told CoinFox.

Xapo’s debit card is still in beta and has not yet been launched publicly. Users of the tested cards have previously reported issues that they had with delivery timing, unexpected fees, logging into accounts and even loss of funds. Xapo currently does not issue cards to the US or India. However, according to BitWage, the cards still can be used anywhere in the world including the US. 

 

“We are planning on finalizing our beta program over the next couple months and will allow any Xapo user worldwide to obtain one of our cards,” Gouveia added.