Cryptocurrency coin Baby Doge announced it would soon go live on payment cards backed by a prepaid card issued by Canadian firm FCF Pay, likely as an attempt to create additional market opportunity for the fledgling coin.
Yuri Mochan provides details on the Baby Doge plan in U Today:
“The official account of Baby Doge Coin (BabyDoge) has tweeted that less than 24 hours remain before the virtual crypto card of BabyDoge goes live, powered by Canadian crypto payments platform FCF Pay. Despite the big adoption news on the horizon, BabyDoge’s price is in the red, trading at $0.000000002642; that is, minus 2.45% over the period of the last 24 hours.”
Attaching crypto accounts to prepaid Visa and Mastercard programs provides simple and easy access to crypto owners who want to easily create liquid spending opportunities with their holdings. Established exchanges such as Binance have created repaid programs in certain markets such as Latin America to encourage normalization of crypto as a payment currency as opposed to an unsecured investment opportunity. In these cases, General Purpose Reloadable prepaid cards serve a critical role by providing access to standard payment rails and fiat currency conversion, while also giving users the flexibility to load value as needed.
The key to success for forward momentum in combining crypto and prepaid should involve clear identification of related partners such as the card issuer, as well as reasonable fees to the consumer. Adding nearly valueless meme coins only encourages the adoption of high fees in order to create financial value to the platform. The FCF Pay website highlights fees including $6 for a new card, $3 for a balance refill plus a 3.5% reload fee and a $2 monthly fee. In contrast, the Binance Card, using its issuance in Columbia as an example, reports no card issuance fee, no monthly fees, and a transaction fee of 0.9%. To benefit users there is also a cashback rewards program with their card. Binance also requires KYC identity verification, providing addition layers of security.
Moving crypto from speculative investment to usable currency requires discipline to innovate by taking advantage of established protocols in payments that serve to protect the consumer. The move by Baby Doge appears to be an attention grab for a low value meme coin and the minimal security protections and KYC standards with FCF Pay only exacerbate the poor connotation of crypto instead of highlighting the potential changes within the payments industry.
Overview by Jordan Hirschfield, Director of the Prepaid Advisory Service at Javelin Strategy and Research.