blockworks.co
Self-custody wallet Giddy has integrated with Bitrefill to enable users to pay for everyday consumer items with cryptocurrency yield.
Users on the Giddy app can access DeFi lending pools and general DeFi protocols to earn yield through their investments. This means that users will not need to touch their initial deposit when purchasing goods from the real world.
“It’s an integration that brings kind of a real-world connection between crypto, blockchain and actually using that money for something,” Giddy CEO Eric Parker told Blockworks.
“Since we’ve had this integration, we’ve been testing it internally. What I’ll do is take a portion of my yield, purchase some Ethereum, stick it in a liquidity pool and as that earns yield, I’m converting that directly to gift cards,” Parker said.
On top of offering general DeFi services, the Giddy app separately offers what Parker calls auto-compounding yield.
“Instead of manually harvesting rewards and then re-compounding [re-staking], we have a service on top of these protocols that automatically takes your rewards and re-compounds it into that protocol in a gas free way,” he said.
Users of the Giddy app also do not need to generate a seed phrase due to account abstraction capabilities built by the team.
Gas fees can be paid using USDC or the GIDDY token, so it won’t be necessary to hold multiple different tokens. GIDDY has fallen 97% since its all-time high recorded just after its launch last April.
Giddy users may still need to KYC for gift cards
Bitrefill currently has 656 different retail partners in the United States, mainly larger corporations ranging from TJ Maxx, Chipotle, Spotify, H&M and Nintendo and over 5,600 retail partners worldwide.
A Mastercard partnership means gift cards can be spent at any store — online or in person — that accepts Mastercard. Users can buy Mastercard gift cards up to $10,000 if they’ve provided identity information for know-your-customer (KYC) controls. Otherwise, the limit is $200.
Most of these gift cards are limited to the country in which they are purchased and cannot be used outside of the country.
Although users do not have to reveal their identities when purchasing most gift cards, Bitrefill will report suspicious purchases and transactions, and users may be prompted to complete a KYC program to continue using its services.
Keeping gift card delivery safe
With this latest partnership, users can create an order on the Giddy wallet through the Bitrefill integration that can be accessed from the Giddy user interface.
From there, Bitrefill will create a one-time use address to which the user can send crypto, and they will later send you a gift card through your email address or preferred delivery method.
Supported cryptocurrencies include bitcoin (as well as Lightning Network), ether, USDC, USDT, litecoin, dogecoin, DASH. Users can also use Binance Pay and the over 200 cryptocurrencies offered for Binance users.
Parker explains that when the gift card is delivered to a user, it will be sealed.
“[This] means that they don’t just send plain text, they send you a web object that you have to interact with to verify your identity before you can get your gift card out,” he said.
Bitrefill has already partnered with a handful of other popular crypto wallets including Binance Pay, Coinbase, Kraken, Trust Wallet and Bitfinex.