After opening its doors to Australians last month, one of the largest brokerage firms in Europe is now offering crypto trading services.
U.K.-based money app Revolut announced on Sept. 3 that its tens of thousands of Australian customers are now able to buy, sell, and hold crypto assets. Users can convert their fiat into Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), XRP, and Stellar (XLM).
Revolut stated that its ‘Metal plan’ customers could now transfer digital assets to other users, as well as exercise the option to round up credit card payments to the nearly dollar, so their spare change could be used to purchase crypto. The app’s standard and premium customers will be the next in line to get access to Revolut’s crypto trading features.
“Buying and selling cryptocurrencies can be incredibly complicated and confusing for the uninitiated, which means many Australians don’t know how to access cryptocurrency as an investment option,” said Revolut Australia CEO Matt Baxby.
The app publicly launched last month with a range of more traditional financial services. It was a highly anticipated launch with 30,000 people on the app’s waitlist and 25,000 Australians using the beta version. In Europe, Revolut has more than 1 million users, with roughly 6,000 new crypto accounts added daily.
Edward Cooper, Head of Crypto at Revolut, said:
“By making cryptocurrencies easier to access for everyone, we’re trying to do what the internet browser did for the internet.”
Australia is growing in importance in the crypto realm. According to analytics site CryptoCompare, the Australian dollar (AUD) is today ranked 17th globally for Bitcoin (BTC) volume by currency and had a 24-hour trading volume of 528 BTC, or $6 million at the time of writing. However AUD is often just used as an on-ramp, with considerably greater trading by Australians between cryptocurrencies themselves.
Great to see @RevolutApp integrating cryptocurrency payments into their product offer locally https://t.co/YG3T334oEJ
— Steve Vallas (@stevevallas) September 3, 2020
The country is also attracting the attention of some of the world’s largest exchanges. In January, Kraken purchased Bit Trade, Australia’s oldest crypto exchange at the time. Binance also launched a fiat-to-crypto platform for Australian crypto traders in July, following the release of Binance Lite Australia in 2019. Users at both exchanges can deposit AUD from bank accounts that support the PayID system, and the main Binance site also nowaccepts PayID AUD deposits.
Major crypto exchange Gemini does not have an Australian branch, but is still making its services available to traders in the country. In August, the exchange announced it had added support for users to trade in AUD.
