Edge, the company behind the popular Edge cryptocurrency wallet, today announced the launch of its new Confidential Mastercard that requires no KYC or personally identifiable information to use.
“Not a name, not a phone number, not an email address,” Edge Co-founder and CEO Paul Puey tells Decrypt. “Definitely not your actual address, nothing. You can create a virtual card in around 15 seconds inside of Edge.”
While privacy is key, Puey says economic empowerment is the defining principle behind the Edge Mastercard.
“I’ve known a handful of people that are unbanked; they simply cannot get a bank account for whatever reason,” Puey says.
The new card is not only for Bitcoin. Puey tells Decrypt that users can sell Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Dash to fund their Edge Mastercard to shop at eligible merchants in the United States.
At launch, the Edge Mastercard will have a daily spend limit of $1,000 and can be used with Apple Pay with Samsung and Google Pay coming later. The option to order a physical card for $20 is coming later this month.
To fund their account, Edge customers sell their Bitcoin inside their wallet and send the USD to their Edge Mastercard to make purchases instead of sending the funds to a bank account.
There are no fees to add funds to a card, Puey adds, explaining that those who wish to shop at an online store can copy and paste their card’s information and add a shipping/billing address to the order.
Edge is the latest among Web3 companies making its way into the Bitcoin payments space for making everyday purchases. In April, Digital asset manager Nexo partnered with Mastercard to launch a Mastercard-backed crypto card in selected European markets. In December, Ledger announced the launch of a debit card that will let users spend their crypto directly or as collateral for cash purchases using the Ledger Live platform.
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