A bank accepting Bitcoin is unusual but one has just sprung up. Digital bank WB21 says it will be using BitPay’s Bitcoin payment processor for its addition of Bitcoin as a method for its over 650,000 customers.
A major problem this addition would solve, according to the bank’s CEO, Michael Gastauer, is WB21 not maintaining a local account in the countries of some of its customers.
Gastauer explains:
“By accepting Bitcoin, our customers can instantly transfer funds to their WB21 account from any country in the world. As soon as they send bitcoin to our address, we credit the value in the currency the customer has selected to their checking account. The funds are instantly available on the account and can be sent out by wire transfers or spent with a WB21 Debit Card.”
BitPay to handle the security of Bitcoin transactions
The WB21 team told Cointelegraph via email:
“We are doing a full KYC check for any customer opening an account with us. Once a customer passed the screening, they get access to their accounts and can start using the Bitcoin feature. BitPay is handling security on the Bitcoin transaction side.”
BitPay randomly associates a payment protocol -enabled Bitcoin address to every new invoice created by WB21 customers in the top-up payment process. This ensures that customers can know exactly who they are paying when they transact.
If they are using a payment protocol-enabled wallet, the system can also automatically collect a Bitcoin refund address in case something goes wrong with the transaction.
A Bitpay spokesperson explains to Cointelegraph that once WB21 receives Bitcoin funds through BitPay, it is able to instantly credit the user's account in any of 18 different currencies. BitPay settles to the merchant for all Bitcoin transactions received in the merchant's own local currency.
BitPay's Chief Commercial Officer Sonny Singh says:
"Consumers with Bitcoin don't have to be limited by the country by country limitations of legacy payments – and now WB21 will allow them greater flexibility for making payments in up to 18 different currencies."