Crypto payments platform Wirex has become a principal member of Visa in Europe after completing Visa’s FinTech Fast Track Programme.

Principal membership will allow Wirex to issue Visa cards itself, offer new products and apply for additional licences. The company already had principal membership with Mastercard.

Wirex currently offers its services to over 3 million people across the EEA and APAC regions, and says it has experienced a 271 per cent increase in the number of crypto exchanges on its platform compared to this time last year.

“Digital currencies have the potential to extend the value of digital payments to a greater number of people and places,” said Cuy Sheffield, senior director and head of cryptocurrency at Visa. “We’re enabling Wirex to use digital currencies at more than 61 million merchants on the Visa network.”

Pavel Matveev, chief executive and co-founder at Wirex, said: “It’s been our core goal to unite the traditional and digital economies and collaborations with trusted global payments companies such as Visa are making this possible, by providing cost-effective solutions for utilising crypto in the everyday.”

In 2014, Visa enabled Wirex to issue a contactless crypto-enabled debit card.

This October, Wirex raised nearly $5 million in a crowdfunding campaign.

A Wirex launch in the US is said to be “imminent”.

The firm is based in London, with offices in Singapore, Kyiv, Tokyo, Toronto, Dallas, Dublin and Atlanta.

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