Circle and Coinbase USDC Now Supported
Posted by Eric Kryski on May 15th, 2019
In the continued spirit of #StableCoinWeek, today we’re excited to officially announce support for USDC as a payment method on our payments platform and our gift card service. With this announcement we officially support more stablecoins than any other platform on the planet. 🚀
Starting today you can use your USDC stablecoins to buy gift cards from over 150 top brands such as Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Sephora through our gift card platform in minutes!
In addition to being able to buy gift cards with USDC, now any online merchant will be able to utilize our online payment and accounting software to accept this USD stablecoin with ease. Online retailers that accept USDC and other cryptocurrency through our payment platform have the option of being paid out in USDC for less than half the price of PayPal and Stripe.
The really interesting thing about this is that now a merchant can sell anywhere they can ship without the risk of chargebacks and fraud, and without volatility and accounting headaches.
Stablecoins are going to change the way we do global commerce.
What is USDC
USDC is a fiat backed USD stablecoin that is a joint effort between Circle and Coinbase — two of the largest players in the cryptocurrency space. Both of which are regulated entities and based in the USA and the UK.
You can think of USDC as a digital dollar. Like other crypto assets, it can move instantaneously, anywhere in the world, any time of any day, and it’s programmable. Unlike other crypto assets, and like many of the other stablecoins we have announced support for, USDC is stable. It is backed 1-for-1 by a dollar and generally hovers between $0.99 and $1.01. Usually only moving on the order of bips. This is not unlike normal fiat currency trading.
Why support USDC when you already support other stablecoins?
It’s simple. Optionality.
Since many of these stablecoins are new and require fiat currency to be held 1-for-1 in order to maintain their peg, they are custodial by nature.
Contrary to what #CryptoTwitter thinks, our opinion is that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many people trust others with their money all the time. However, because there is a degree of trust required compared to other more decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, we want to give people the ability to choose which stablecoin(s) they are most comfortable using.
In addition, because this is a new space, we also are hedging our own bets and giving our customers some protection by making it easy to switch to a more preferred stablecoin any time they choose.
Our opinion is that stablecoins are a more natural way for people to onboard into the crypto ecosystem and experience the security, efficiency, transparency and self-custody benefits of cryptocurrency without the risk of volatility or tax headache. Stablecoins are a key piece of our future vision for a frictionless, global economy, where all assets can move anywhere instantaneously and people can have better access to capital.
Just like we have multiple fiat currencies, we expect to see many more stablecoins. Because of this, we want to support as many as possible.
Until next time,
Eric & The Bidali Team
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Do You Sell Things?
Bidali enables merchants to sell products and services to anyone in the world for a fraction of the cost — without chargebacks, tax headaches, high exchange fees, and volatility risk. Now your customer base is only limited to where you can ship. If you want to give your customers the option to pay using next generation payment methods you can sign up here.
Originally published at https://www.bidali.com on May 15, 2019.
