News

Blade Financial introduces debit-card program for bitcoin businesses

"The reality is, consumers just don’t have enough ways to spend their cryptocurrency."

December 16, 2014

Blade Financial has launched a B2B payment-processing platform extending traditional debit-card programs to bitcoin businesses.

The company reports that the Blade engine integrates digital-currency companies with banks via a REST API to deploy white-label and co-branded debit cards that work over existing global payment networks. Features include instant transaction time; real-time debiting of digital currency at point of authorization; and no required pre-funding of fiat.

"Despite support from major retailers like Dell, DISH Network and Overstock.com, bitcoin’s annual transaction volume currently represents less than one percent of the $7.4 trillion in purchases processed through Visa and MasterCard last year. The reality is, consumers just don’t have enough ways to spend their cryptocurrency," the company stated in a press release.

"It’s the age old chicken and egg problem: Which comes first, merchants or consumers?" said Blade Financial Co-Founder and CEO Ed Boyle. "Blade takes away half of the equation by fully solving for the merchant side."