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In the recent past, cryptocurrency was strictly for trading and hodling. But nowadays, using crypto to pay for everyday goods and services is pretty easy. While this was the case even before PayPal announced that its 346 million users would be able to spend digital assets at 26 million eligible merchants, it’s even truer now.
Whether you’re interested in spending crypto or would prefer to save it, the fact that bitcoin and other assets benefit from this utility is undoubtedly a good thing for the industry, for it promotes adoption. Today there are many ways to spend crypto. and in this review, we’re going to consider just one of them, namely the CoinZoom crypto card. Or, to be more accurate, cards – there are several to choose from. Let’s get to it.
CoinZoom: An Easy Way to Spend Your Crypto
CoinZoom is a U.S. regulated crypto exchange platform founded in 2018 and launched in 2020. Created to provide traders with an institutional-grade platform for buying, selling, and spending digital assets, the Utah-based exchange – which has subsidiaries in Australia and Ireland – offers trading in over 40 cryptocurrencies and 100 market trading pairs. It also offers five different crypto/fiat debit cards thanks to its partnership with Visa. In essence, each one allows holders to spend their crypto and fiat balances at 53 million participating merchants.
So, why are there five different cards? In short, because each tier provides different benefits. The entry-level Select card, for instance, has a daily spend limit of $500 while the newly-launched Premium Black Metal card has a daily limit of $10,000. Higher-tier cards also provide trading fee discounts, a higher cashback percentage, airdrop functionality, free wire transfers and more generous referral rewards. (You’ll find a comprehensive breakdown of each debit card’s features here.)
Even the entry-level card provides a good deal of utility: Cashback rewards of 1%; a virtual card; a $500 daily transfer limit on ZoomMe, CoinZoom’s peer-to-peer system akin to Venmo; a referral reward limit of $1,000, 24/7 support, and ATM access.
At present, the CoinZoom Visa Card is only available for U.S. customers, although international versions are said to be in the pipeline. Card rewards, incidentally, are paid in ZOOM, the native currency of CoinZoom. An ERC20 utility token whose supply is capped at 600 million, ZOOM powers the CoinZoom ecosystem and provides holders with a range of discounts and enhancements, including trading fee discounts of up to 50%.
Each card tier corresponds to the number of ZOOM tokens held by the card-holder, with tokens paid out as rewards when users make qualified purchases. For Select and Preferred cards, just 1k and 3k ZOOM is needed; for Gold, Platinum and Black, the ZOOM threshold rises to 12k, 50k and 100k. Needless to say, these cards are geared towards experienced traders who would greatly benefit from the generous trading fee discounts of 20%, 35% and 50% respectively.
Why CoinZoom?
With five debit cards to choose from, and tens of millions of merchants at which you can spend your fiat and crypto, it’s hard not to be impressed by what CoinZoom is offering. And we haven’t even discussed ZoomMe, the platform’s P2P remittance system that allows customers to send USD or crypto instantly to their friends and family. You can even dispatch funds internationally, all for free.
ZoomMe is CoinZoom’s very own version of Venmo, and again, transfer limits correspond to the card tier; at the lower end of the spectrum, you can send no more than $500 per day, but with a Black card, the limit is $10,000.
For the sake of comparison, Venmo’s maximum weekly spending limit – even on its highest-tier debit card – is just $7,000.
Alarm bells sometimes ring when users learn that a platform has only just launched. But such fears are easily assuaged in this case: CoinZoom’s management team has a wealth of exchange and trading experience, and has conducted KYC, AML, OFAC, and FinCEN compliance checks on hundreds of thousands of customers from 140+ countries. Prior to joining CoinZoom, CEO Todd Crosland was the Founder and CEO of Interbank FX, LLC (“IBFX”), a Futures Commission Merchant and Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer registered with the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
As mentioned, CoinZoom is entirely regulatory compliant: the platform is a registered MSB (Money Services Business) in all 50 states and territories, and is also a registered Money Transmitter, available for trading in 48 states (NY and HI are pending).
Because it offers several different cards, CoinZoom should appeal to both experienced traders and users who are new to the crypto space. ZoomMe, in particular, will be of use to the latter: the ability to send dollars or bitcoin instantly to friends and family, for free, is a terrific feature.
