Brazilian Crypto Exchange Bitpreco Adding Banking Platform

Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Bitpreco is reportedly launching a platform that will provide banking services.

The new platform, which is called Bitybank, will offer payments, digital accounts and credit cards through an app, Bitcoin.com reported Wednesday (Nov. 23).

“Digital banking was a great success in Brazil,” Bitpreco Partner Ney Pimenta said, per the report. “It is an extremely easy way to bring users to the crypto world with a full-service experience where they can buy, sell, withdraw, deposit, exchange for other assets and experience DeFi, with the same ease of investing in savings.”

Bitybank will also offer the customers using its cards a rewards program that will pay them in crypto — a way to introduce people to the crypto market, the report said.

“A lot of people are afraid of buying cryptocurrency, but they wouldn’t have the same fear if they won this cryptocurrency,” Pimenta said in the report. “It’s a way to bring that mass into this universe.”

The number of users registered on Bitpreco’s cryptocurrency exchange increased fivefold from 2020 to 2021, and the company expects the introduction of the Bitybank banking services platform to boost that number by 50%, according to the report.

PYMNTS research has found that 98% of bank customers in Brazil leverage some form of digital banking — higher than the 90% seen throughout Latin America as a whole.

The country’s embrace of digital banking carries over to digital payments as well. The Brazilian government and central banking system are harnessing this digital innovation with their own instant payments platform, Pix, which is now used by more than half of the country’s consumers, according to the “Digitizing Payments in Latin America Playbook,” a PYMNTS and Kushki collaboration.

Other forms of digital innovation, such as cryptocurrency, are also seeing widespread adoption, the report said.