An Australian BitCoin startup, CoinJar, has today begun trialling CoinJar Swipe, the first EFTPOS card that allows bitcoin holders to spend Bitcoins anywhere they like.
With the CoinJar Swipe card, customers taking part in the trial will be able to withdraw from their bitcoin account, converted to Australian dollars, at any ATM or purchase items at any retail outlet.
It’s the first Aussie product to bridge the gap between the digital currency bitcoin and traditional payment methods, and promises to greatly improve the bitcoin experience for consumers.
To do this, CoinJar has teamed up with ’emerchants’, who claim to be the leading prepaid payments solution provider in Australia, to develop Coinjar Swipe.
Asher Tan, CoinJar CEO and co-founder said that “the Swipe trial was an important leap in taking bitcoin into the mainstream Australian economy”, and explained that “we created Swipe because we simply wanted to make it easier for our customers to spend their bitcoin.
“Swipe demystifies bitcoin and makes it accessible to everyone through a secure platform. Our team is really excited about Swipe, and we look forward to receiving feedback from our customers.”
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CoinJar Card and iPhone app |
100 cards are being distributed to pre-registered CoinJar DNA members as part of the trial, who were asked on social media “What would you do with your CoinJar Swipe?”.
CoinJar says it received answers ranging from “Pay my bitcoin business bills” to “buy a sausage roll, sauce and an iced coffee for lunch”.
CoinJar says it believes bitcoin is a democratising force in finance and is ensuring the cards will be allocated evenly between early adopters, everyday consumers and a wide variety of demographic characteristics, with customers set to receive their cards from next week.
With bitcoins being used by an estimated 500,000 Australians already, with that figure estimated to be rapidly growing, with CoinJar stating it has processed more than $50 million worth of bitcoin transactions in the past 12 months for more than 30,000 individual and business customers.
The Company says its next step will be “a wider rollout of the technology in the near future”.
CoinJar Customers can pre-register for further releases of the card here.