Shutterstock
One of Australia’s oldest exchanges, CoinJar, has released a new crypto card in partnership with Mastercard, which enables users to spend their crypto using Australian dollars, the exchange said in a blog post on 3 August.
According to the announcement, the newly launched CoinJar Card supports 30 cryptocurrencies — including major ones such as BTC, ETH, and XRP — and is available in both physical and digital form, through an integration with Apple Pay and Google Pay. The exchange also stated that this was the first crypto card in Australia under the Mastercard brand that enables users to spend their crypto in the local currency. The company said in its post:
“CoinJar Card allows you to use the cryptocurrency in your CoinJar to make purchases, wherever Mastercard is accepted. All you need to do is choose which crypto you want to spend and it’ll be automatically converted to Australian dollars when you make a transaction – no need to preload.”
While other card providers use the U.S. dollar or the Singaporean dollar — which could lead to high international transaction fees — CoinJar Card denominates transactions in AUD, which is then routed through Australian banks and payment providers. CoinJar has also claimed that its card has no ongoing fees and only a 1% conversion rate, which is returned to users through an in-house rewards program.
Even though CoinJar’s card appears to be the first one to denominate transactions in Australian dollars, the exchange is not the only one that has been working on such a product. Only two weeks ago Australian startup CryptoSpend received Visa’s approval to launch a similar product in the country.