FIS Partners With Fireblocks to Accelerate Crypto Adoption
- Clients of the Fortune 500 company will now gain access to a self-custody digital asset wallet technology, as well as tools for staking and DeFi.
- Partnering with FIS brings Fireblocks’ technology to “nearly every type” of buy-side, sell-side, and corporate institution in traditional assets.
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Payments giant FIS has entered into a partnership with custody platform Fireblocks to accelerate the adoption of crypto within the capital markets industry, the company said in a press release on 13 April.
According to the announcement, the Fireblocks partnership will provide FIS’ clients with access to the “largest” crypto trading venues, liquidity providers, lending desks, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. FIS is a Fortune 500 company with over 6,000 clients globally, including 80% of the biggest players in the capital markets industry, such as asset managers, hedge funds, brokers, and banks. The head of Capital Markets at FIS, Nasser Khodri, said in a statement:
“As digital currencies become more mainstream, capital markets firms will greatly benefit from a single destination that helps them manage many classes of digital assets. This exciting new agreement is a proof point of our commitment to invest in growing our digital asset capabilities for our global client base.”
Fireblocks’ platform will allow FIS capital market clients to move, store, and issue digital assets, as well as give them access to a self-custody digital asset wallet technology. The platform also offers an asset transfer network and tools to access DeFi, staking, and other forms of digital asset exposure.
FIS has been increasing its crypto capabilities over time, and is now working with four of the five top crypto exchanges to provide its clients with card-to-crypto and other “money movement” services. Last week, the company announced it would offer merchants that use its Worldpay platform the ability to receive settlements directly in the USDC stablecoin.
- Though officially launched today, the Payments Engine has already been used by Checkout.com during its pilot phase to settle around $1 billion in crypto transactions.
- The solution offers quick access to fiat-to-crypto conversion, cross-border internal settlement, micropayments, and merchant adoption with lower processing fees.
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- The integration was made possible through Fireblocks’ Web3 Engine, a suite of developer tools designed for optimized security.
- Fireblocks’ users will now have direct access to Solana’s rich ecosystem of DeFi, NFT, and Web3 applications.
- Through the acquisition, Fireblocks will be able to provide payment service providers with a new suite of tools for accepting digital assets.
- Although Fireblocks has had an institutional-focus so far, it will now expand into the business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and cross-border payments spaces.