Full description of Wirex
Wirex is a payment platform aiming to facilitate
Crypto (?) payments and to improve their adoption in our daily lives. Wirex issues a plastic payment card supporting BTC and a few other cryptocurrencies along with
Fiat (?) across various regions. It also offers its users mobile and web wallets for storing digital assets. It is fuelled by a native utility
Token (?) WRX.
With headquarters located in London, UK, Wirex also has additional departments in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Tokyo, Japan. Its crypto debit card is delivered across more than 130 countries, but the US is not one of them due to complicated regulatory obstacles. Wirex claims that it is licensed with the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and remains fully compliant with the local law.
Wirex products
The plastic contactless card is the key product issued by Wirex. Its main goal is to make banking services available for all people around the globe. The only thing that a user needs to get open an account on the Wirex platform is access to the internet. With the help of Wirex card, it’s become possible to pay with cryptocurrencies in our daily lives while shopping.
At the time of writing, the card combines traditional fiat currencies such as EUR, USD, and GBP together with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, WAVES, a stable
Coin (?) DAI and XRP wallets within a single account. One can use Wirex as a mobile or web
Wallet (?) for storing his or her funds.
All the currencies can be instantly converted between each other. The funds can be uploaded via the linked bank account or via regular money transfer from another
Cryptocurrency (?) wallet. In addition, Wirex offers a 0.5% cryptoback reward for paying with BTC and other cryptocurrencies in shops and restaurants. Another way to get a reward from Wirex is to invite a friend via an affiliate link. When a referred user purchases 100 USD worth of cryptocurrency via the Wirex account, both of you will get 5 USD in bitcoins.
Wirex is not the only Bitcoin card provider. Among its key competitors are Coinbase, Cryptopay, Nexo, Crypterium, TenX, Bitwala, The US-based Bitpay, and some others. Most of them have been relying on WaveCrest as the only plastic card issuer supporting cryptocurrencies. However, after VISA blocked the key BTC card provider in January 2018 for policies’ violation, their businesses suffered significantly and not all of them have managed to find a new card issuer to cover the same set of regions as they did before. So far, Wirex has managed to cover the biggest variety of countries.
Wirex fees and limits
Wirex charges no fees for uploading or withdrawing the funds. However, you should check the
Exchange (or Cryptocurrency exchange) (?) rate to evaluate whether or not a transaction would be profitable. Also, Wirex has its own
Limits (?) for uploading and withdrawing funds, just like any other payment card. One can withdraw up to 250 USD/EUR/GBP per day via ATM and top up the card by 10.000 USD / 8.000 EUR / 7.500 GBP per day accordingly.
Wirex token WXT
To stimulate the usage of its product and promote its products further, Wirex has issued its own token WXT. This is a utility token based on the platform Stellar. WRX was released during the initial exchange offering (IEO) on June 26th via the cryptocurrency exchange platform OKEx. The public sale ended on July 1st helping the team raise the hard cap of 3 million USD for the further development of their products. All the tokens bought during the pre-sale were frozen for the 6 months after the fundraising event.
WXT holders get some benefits while using Wirex’s services such as discounts on fees (up to 100%) and regular rewards that are proportionate to the amount of staked coins. In addition, enhanced cryptobacks are available for those who pay with cryptocurrencies in stores (up to 1.5% in WXT). Other features include free access to Wirex Premium, exclusive offers for merchants, free Wirex Premium card, travel insurance and more.
Wirex team
Dmitry Lazarichev, Wirex founder and CEO, holds MBA at Cass Business School. Prior to launching Wirex in 2014, he had also founded Peltrade, a British company focusing on trading biomass wood fuels. His colleague and partner Dmitry Lazarichev has helped him in both projects.
The company has never been subject to any lawsuits. Moreover, in August 2018, it was awarded an e-money license by FCA which made it possible for the project to create e-money accounts in more than 20 different currencies. Wirex aims to get similar licenses in other regions as well.
- Exchange symbol (?): WXT
- Cryptocurrency type (?): Token (?)
Wirex for developers
Wirex social sites
Source: NOMICS
