Certainly, cryptocurrencies have continued to grow in popularity and adoption. Occasioned by this development, more innovations are now greeting the industry to foster investors’ experience. One of these innovations is the crypto cards, designed to facilitate payments using cryptocurrencies. It is not in doubt that digital assets are the future of money and payment and have the potential to relegate traditional money (fiats). This article seeks to extensively discuss the rudiments of crypto cards and their benefits.
What are Crypto Cards?
Crypto cards are primarily designed to enable users to make payments with their digital assets. With this card, you can buy goods in stores and then pay using your crypto holdings. Although, it is necessary to note that the vendor in which you pay with your crypto card is not expected to receive the funds in crypto. The crypto card will automatically convert the funds into fiats before transferring it to the receiver’s account. Today, there are prepaid crypto cards and credit crypto cards.
According to our findings, the prepaid crypto card is already pre-loaded with crypto assets. While a crypto credit card works similarly to a standard credit card. To get any of these crypto cards, you can reach out to any of the licensed issuers, like Visa, Mastercard and many more. Meanwhile, since Visa and Mastercard have cemented their presence across hundreds of countries across the globe, users of their cards are at the advantage of using them anywhere they go without hindrance. Although there are some countries today that mandate tax payments on the usage of these cards. So wherever you are using the cards, endeavour to find out if they take taxes and the rates.
Over time, many have asked if the usage of a crypto card comes with any risk. Yes, it does. The implication of using these cards is that market fluctuations or extreme volatility in the market can impact the value of the assets in your cards. For instance, if you have ETH in your card, any dip in the price of ETH will surely affect your holdings.
Difference Between Credit, Debit, and Crypto Cards
Meanwhile, there are a few differences between credit, debit, and crypto cards. While they can all function as a medium of payment, crypto card accepts crypto deposits as against the fiat payment of their contemporaries. Therefore, it’s safe to say that a crypto card is to virtual assets what debit and credit cards are to fiats.
More so, a crypto card is a reliable option to make virtual assets transactions due to its connection with the user’s wallet. Thus, the wallet serves as a base for processing authorized transactions on the card. So, these cards can be likened to each other due to the same purpose they share. However, their crypto and fiat relationship is a major difference between them.
Pros and Cons of Crypto Debit Card
The major benefit of using crypto cards is the flexibility of making payments using virtual tokens. In some cases, crypto transactions are swift depending on the type of virtual coin and blockchain network involved. Transactions involving tokens like BTC can take a while to reflect. Though, most virtual assets transactions via a crypto card are faster than fiat transactions.
Also, the volatility of cryptocurrency can be a blessing, and the other way. On the good side, users can pay less for a commodity if the prices improve, while they can pay more if the prices drop. Nevertheless, most crypto cards run to provide overdraft transactions and cashback bonuses. Likewise, holders won’t have to go through the stress of converting their virtual assets to fiat to make payments. With these cards, they can easily facilitate transactions in virtual assets without trading them for fiats to make payments.
Meanwhile, a major disadvantage of crypto cards is their global acceptability. Cryptocurrency as an innovation is yet to gain total acceptance, thus, making crypto card unpopular. It’ll be difficult to make transactions with a crypto card if the vendor or merchant doesn’t accept cryptocurrency payments. A Crypto card appears useless if merchants fail to accept it for crypto payments. Lastly, crypto cards are making a name in the industry today for their innovative way of processing cryptocurrency transactions.
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