UK Fintech Firm Revolut Brings Bitcoin, Ether Trading to US Customers

Revolut customers in 49 U.S. states can now buy, hold and sell bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) on the digital bank’s crypto platform. 

The British fintech firm entered the U.S. in March and waited until it had already established its core products in the country before launching bitcoin services as well, said Revolut crypto chief Edward Cooper.

Revolut gained the regulatory permission to do this by partnering with New York-based trust company Paxos.

Paxos also announced Wednesday it was rolling out a new brokerage API service, allowing clients to provide buy, sell, send and hold options. Through the Paxos Crypto Brokerage, the firm acts as a custodian for its clients, such as Revolut, and manages the regulatory compliance aspects.

“What’s exciting about it is really lowering the barrier of entry for firms to get into crypto,” said Paxos CEO Chad Cascarilla. “You can plug into our APIs and we’ll provide you the regulatory ability and the technological capabilities to offer crypto for buying or selling.”

In every U.S. state except Tennessee, Revolut allows customers to round up their transactions, converting spare change into crypto. Revolut also gives customers the ability to convert BTC and ETH among 28 global currencies, with plans to branch out into other cryptos in the future. 

In Europe, Revolut supports litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH) and XRP. The company charges 2.5% for every crypto transaction that standard customers make and 1.5% for premium costumers. With around a million customers in Europe transacting in crypto, Revolut crypto arm is a “profit center” for the bank, Cooper said. 

The company’s next targets are in the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Singapore and Japan, he added.

“We’ll launch the core product first and then see what steps we need to make to launch the crypto product,” Cooper said. “We’ll probably be fastest to market in the Australian market, so I’d imagine Crypto Australia is next.”

Unrelated to its expansion into the U.S., the bank recently changed ownership rules for crypto, making users the legal owners of their own coins. Revolut is also suspending the ability to make crypto card payments in Europe on July 27 and isn’t introducing the feature in the U.S. 

“We have got some feedback from users in Europe that they were spending and weren’t expecting for their crypto balances to be spent,” said Cooper. “We want to make that better. … We’ll launch it and probably have crypto-specific cards.”

Nikhilesh De contributed reporting.