To give direct competition to cryptocurrency exchanges, payment giant NCR has announced a partnership with asset management firm NYDIG that would allow 650 banks to provide bitcoin purchases to their clients. This is a massive step towards mass adoption, as these banks together have a customer base of more than 24 million customers, and they don’t have to deal with regulatory requirements.
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With this partnership, NYDIG becomes the new custodian for these banks and they can now freely offer crypto-related services. This also eliminates the usage of third-party exchanges and customers can directly spend their bank money to buy bitcoin.
This deal includes banks based in North Carolina and other credit unions in California. The enterprise giant also revealed that their customers repeatedly complained about the inability of direct purchases through personal bank accounts. The Atlanta-based NCR perfectly capitalized on the user demand of crypto services, and by enabling customers to buy from their existing accounts, they are strengthening banking relationships. The president of NCR, Douglas Brown, commented on this partnership:
We’re firm believers in the benefits of crypto and the strategic application,” says NCR president of digital banking, Douglas Brown. And that’s true for our banking relationships, as evidenced by NYDIG, and across retailers as well as restaurants and the like.
This deal by NCR is not the first one facilitating mass crypto adoption. In May, they made a deal with crypto payment provider Flexa to make crypto transfers for paying gas and other items. NYDIG feels confident with this partnership because they have clearly understood that customers are moving their money from the banks to outside exchanges. The President of NYDIG told Forbes:
A lot of these banks have seen that one of the biggest outflows from their depositors is moving money from the bank to exchanges like Coinbase. And so that’s part of why banks are so excited to have this capability for themselves and their consumers.
The approach taken for implementing this deal between NYDIG and NCR starts with allowing customers to trade BTC and other cryptocurrencies from a mobile application. For daily purchases, the firm is going to source it from OTC desks and exchanges, and the customer will think they are connected to the bank.
Another proposed approach as of now is the per-user-per-month model. This subscription-based model depends on how the bank charges a transaction fee, and NYDIG’s head of bank solutions, Patrick Sells, believes it is going to be cheaper than most rates today in the marketplace.
The 135-year old organization made $6.2 billion in revenue last year, and none of that came from cryptocurrency transactions, so we can expect this partnership to blow up and create a better platform for banks to help their customers. It is also added by the firm that they are exploring digital asset custody as a new venture.
Born and brought up in India, Karthikeya Gutta is a crypto journalist and freelance contributor for ItsBlockchain. He covers various aspects of the industry with in-depth analysis and research. His passion towards blockchain and crypto ecosystem is mainly because he believes it can really change the world and help millions of people.
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