Ripio, a cryptocurrency service provider, has launched the prepaid Ripio Card for Brazil in partnership with Visa, per a report from Portal do Bitcoin.
Users of the Ripio Card can receive up to 5% cashback in bitcoin with any purchase. When the card is used, Ripio will automatically convert bitcoin used for a purchase to the Brazilian Real ($R). This conversion allows the Visa network to process the transaction in fiat on behalf of Ripio, delivering reals to the merchant.
Additionally, bitcoin cashback is limited to R$250 per month and will not be credited after October 31. Furthermore, users of the Ripio Card will be able to spend their bitcoin anywhere across the world that supports Visa transactions without experiencing any fees.
“The 5% cashback in BTC is an excellent yield tool for users and certainly far superior to the options offered by traditional financial institutions,” said Sebastian Serrano, CEO of Ripio.
Henrique Teixeira, Ripio’s global head of new business, expects 250,000 users will be leveraging the prepaid card by December later this year. Thus, in order to accomplish the necessary scale for the platform, Teixeira expects that the company will spend near R$1.5 million on the new product.
Ripio is joining a growing list of companies and institutions expanding bitcoin offerings to Brazil, as the country boasts a large number of bitcoin investors. In fact, Brazil ranked 14th on a top 20 list of countries with the highest levels of cryptocurrency adoption, while also ranking 5th for total on-chain value sent.
Thus, banking giants Santander and BTG Pactual, brokerage behemoth XP, and Warren Buffet-backed NuBank have all pushed to enter the growing ecosystem, among others.