Tezos Commons :: Baanx’s New Venture: A Tezos Non-Custodial Payment Card on Etherlink
July 23, 2024A closer look at Baanx and their plans to launch a non-custodial payment card for Tezos on Etherlink.
Crypto debit cards have been around for a while. I’ve personally used a Coinbase Card, and many other popular custodial options have emerged over the years. Baanx focuses on non-custodial options and has worked with industry heavyweights such as Ledger, 1inch, MetaMask, and giant payment networks like MasterCard.
They recently announced their plans to launch a non-custodial payment card utilizing Etherlink, Tezos’ new Layer-2 EVM-compatible network currently in mainnet beta. In this article, let’s explore Baanx more and highlight their plans for Tezos.
What is Baanx?
Baanx is a fintech platform that offers a variety of financial services for businesses to adopt in today’s digital age. From Virtual IBANs, debit cards, payment gateways, digital assets, compliance solutions like KYC and AML, and more, Baanx is a one-stop shop for helping businesses navigate the murky waters of traditional fiat and digital asset technologies.
If you’ve been exposed to crypto for some time now, you’ve probably used a hardware wallet before. If not, feel free to read our piece on safe practices. Baanx received FCA approval to undertake crypto asset activities in January 2022 and they’ve been pushing for widespread adoption ever since. One of the things Baanx has worked on exclusively was becoming the provider of the Crypto Life (CL) card, which was introduced and powered by Ledger.
Ledger is the most popular hardware wallet producer, next to Trezor. The card is only available for UK and EEA residents, but there are plans to support US residents at some point. Baanx has also worked with MasterCard and 1inch to create another “1inch card” card and MetaMask.
Clearly, Baanx knows a thing or two about what they’re doing if industry heavyweights and major payment networks like MasterCard work alongside them. But don’t take it just from me. We had Simon Jones, Baanx’s Chief Commercial Officer, on our TezTalks Live show, who shared insights on Baanx’s vision and longer-term thinking.
Technology is global, it works anywhere and you can plug into the internet. The payments aren’t; the financial services are. So, we live in this world where the world is very big but it’s increasingly getting smaller. One of the vestiges of this non-reformed sector is in financial services. So, I think if you look at that from a platform perspective and anyone out there trying to build something or create a business, there’s a huge amount of friction. Looking at the companies that kind of conquered the world, Google, Apple, Meta, etc. None of these guys have ever tried to come to this arena. That’s because obviously the way in which this arena is designed is unduly complicated. So, that’s the first point.I think the second point is this whole idea of, hey, I give my money to someone, so I have to put it somewhere. But, then I have to pay them to get it back, pay when I want to go and pay them, or someone else has to pay to receive my money. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s just illogical; you’ll always have some level of a fee because, at the end of the day, it’s a business. But why should somebody else get to dictate what exchange rate I get or what interest rate I get? Or what will it cost me to make a payment? That doesn’t make any sense, that should be my decision. If I want to pay a certain way I should be able to press that button. If I want to send money a certain way, I should be able to press that button. If I want to put my savings somewhere and earn a certain yield on it, I should be able to pick, you know, five providers, not one. So, that kind of closed architecture of the system is really a huge drag…
It really makes you think. Things shouldn’t be this unnecessarily complicated. In the same sense, anyone can use the internet with a phone or device; there should be that frictionless environment for sending payments.
Make sure to listen to the full episode for more of Simon’s insight and why Baanx believes that will be the case!
Baanx and Tezos Collaboration
We first learned about the Tezos Foundation and overall collaborative efforts with Baanx in 2020. Earlier in the year, we were treated to some news about a Series A funding round with Tezos Foundation as one of the participating investors. Per the press release, the focus is primarily on gaining support in the US and Latin American regions this year, where their flagship product, the CL card, has only UK and EEA support.
Over a week ago, we learned in another press release that Baanx is working on a Tezos-branded non-custodial crypto debit card utilizing Etherlink. Once live, transactions will make use of the Etherlink network to allow cheap and fast payments. In its current mainnet beta stage, Etherlink boasts impressive stats such as sub-second confirmation times and nearly free gas fees. This is exactly the scale you’d need to see for a major crypto debit card.
There are a few things we should also understand here, especially as far as crypto debit cards go. Baanx’s Tezos card will be non-custodial. If we look at the most available crypto debit cards, they are all primarily custodial (Coinbase, Crypto.com, etc). In fact, if you remember, BlockFi, Celsius, and others all offered some of these custodial cards in the heyday. We saw what unfortunately unfolded with them.
This is an inherent risk you take with custodial solutions. While technically, you have full control over your assets within the exchange where you hold them, such as Coinbase. If something ever happened to Coinbase and other custodial companies, there would be a great chance that you would lose access to your assets.
Baanx’s solution uses cold storage and non-custodial solutions like your hardware wallet. Take their CL card, for instance. Using your Ledger Live account, all you have to do is make sure your accounts are linked and choose an asset to fund the card. You make all the decisions; no intermediary on the other side ensures the transaction is okay. This is about the same level of experience we can probably expect for the Tezos card.
For some deeper insights, be sure to check out the latest TezTalks episode with Simon Jones and the X space with Siddharth Singhal, the BD lead at Trilitech!
Final Thoughts
As far as crypto debit cards go, no one in the market has the expertise with flagship products like the CL card quite like Baanx. Working alongside MasterCard, 1inch, and MetaMask, Baanx brings a wealth of experience to their work on the non-custodial payment card for Tezos. Taking place on Etherlink, it will be exciting to see Etherlink officially launch on the mainnet from its present mainnet beta stage and have a neat way to use crypto for everyday purchases.
Baanx’s New Venture: A Tezos Non-Custodial Payment Card on Etherlink was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
