Bitwala, the service that lets EU citizens pay their bills in bitcoin — as well as offering a bitcoin debit card — has recently announced its new Bitwala Bitcoin Wallet service. This new wallet integrates both of their existing services into the same platform, reportedly making the whole process of paying bills and topping up a debit card with bitcoin a lot smoother and easier.
Also read: Bitwala’s New EmailPay Platform
Bitwala: Pay Everyday Bills with Bitcoin
Bitwala is a service that lets its users pay everyday bills in bitcoin, including but not limited to utility bills, phone bills, and mortgage payments. The user sends the corresponding amount of bitcoin to Bitwala, and they will take care of the rest by paying the bill using its bank account. This service is currently limited to citizens living inside the European Union, as it uses SEPA bank transfers, a service only available to European banks. SEPA transfers have very low fees and they are relatively quicker than traditional bank transfers, reducing costs and increasing accessibility.
Bitwala Bitcoin Debit Card
Bitcoin debit cards are also available as part of this new wallet service. Much like the majority of other bitcoin debit cards, Bitwala’s is not denominated in bitcoin. Instead, they are denominated in a fiat currency — euros in Bitwala’s case — and can be topped up by selling bitcoin for said fiat currency.
Two types of debit cards are currently offered. The virtual card only provides users with card details, such as a card number, expiry date and CVV, and can only be used to make online purchases. The physical card is mailed to the user, and they can use it for real life, point-of-sale purchases or ATM withdrawals.
About Bitwala
We wanted to find out how this new wallet service would make spending bitcoin more convenient, since many wallet services are available and most of them don’t make spending bitcoin any easier, so we reached out to Bitwala and got the following responses:
We are really excited about the new Bitwala bitcoin wallet. If I had to sum up all the advantages our own wallet offers, I would use one word: Usability. We at Bitwala try to make handling Bitcoins as easy as sending a text message. In order to make the experience as smooth as possible it was just the logic step to introduce the Bitwala wallet. It’s an all-in-one solution for our users. – Jörg von Minckwitz, CEO
Jan Goslicki, Bitwala’s COO elaborated:
Paying for transfers and topping up cards will be much quicker and more reliable with the Bitwala bitcoin wallet. A lot of new bitcoin users are using custodian wallets (e.g. from account services like bitcoin exchanges). These wallets are not reliable if it comes to paying time sensitive invoices. Most exchanges are charging fees on top of the transaction fees. We don’t charge anything for our wallet.
What do you think about Bitwala? Will you use any of their services? Comment below!
Images courtesy of Bitwala.