Wirex have today announced their latest updates off the back of July’s announcement of their principle membership with Mastercard.
The press release states early that this is a ‘warning shot to competing platforms’ rather than focusing more on the core features of the update, at which point I soon started to lose interest. It goes on to say:
‘The new Wirex card is already being touted as a potential competition-killer with the potential to set a new standard in the FinTech and crypto payments space. Linked to 19 secure crypto and traditional currency accounts in the Wirex app, it allows cardholders to seamlessly spend multiple fiat and cryptocurrencies in day-to-day life without exchanging or offboarding. The company believes that these game-changing features, combined with sky-high limits and next-to-no fees, gives the new Wirex Mastercard a significant advantage over its competitors.’
**It should be noted here that this was an enforced move to Mastercard after Visa provider Wirecard filed for insolvency after they lost $2.1bn and have no idea where it is. That’s quite a big sofa to be looking in for the loose change.**
Interesting features indeed. Again, more interesting if there was less on the competition killing aspect, which is likely to not kill off any competitors anytime soon, especially when the actual product update announcement was above but I missed it:
‘The first of a three-phase, revolutionary product update was recently made available to Wirex users in the European Economic Area (EEA), in line with a close partnership with payment solution company LHV. A range of features are now live, including five new currencies (HRK, CZK, PLN, RON, and HUF), free multicurrency individual IBANs and free SEPA multicurrency transfers and SEPA instant for EUR transfers, while foreign exchange fees or currency conversion fees when topping-up with a local currency card have been removed.’
Revolutionary indeed. Although makes you wonder what Wirex did before these updates. These changes are actually significant for European customers and are a good step forward for Wirex, while their new Mastercard may deliver more enticing news in the coming weeks.
