Cloud based financial exchange Uphold, formerly Bitreserve, has redesigned its functions, products and services for a relaunch. It now aims to connect banks, credit and debit cards and bitcoin to clients’ digital wallets for instant financial services and transactions.
The service, which began as a pure Bitcoin trader, now offers consumers, businesses and charities the option to fund their Uphold accounts via bank transfer or by linking a credit or debit card. The new options are now available in 33 European countries. Uphold said it plans to roll out these services to the United States, China and India by November.
In a four phase rollout out, members in 33 European countries will be able to fund Uphold accounts via bank transfer from October 14th. Meanwhile, clients in 30 European countries can now fund accounts with credit or debit cards. By November 2015 clients in the US and China will be added to the service.
Phase Three, which is scheduled for December 2015, will see Uphold introduce both physical and virtual payment cards with Visa, MasterCard and Discover card, allowing clients to pay merchants online or in-store, directly from their Uphold accounts. The same services are scheduled to be extended to the Indian market in January 2016 in Phase Four of the plan roll-out of cloud services.
The service aims to connect the world’s legacy and fragmented financial networks and systems with a cohesive cloud-money platform, said Uphold CEO Anthony Watson. Uphold said it will bring instant, transparent, accountable and free financial services for all consumers. “We’re simplifying and radically reducing costs for all financial transactions and services – from currency conversions to international money transfers and payroll to bill payment and remittance,” said Watson, “our mission is to make it easy and frictionless for anyone.”
To date, Uphold has powered over $400 million in transactions by tens of thousands of members across 163 countries, in 24 supported currencies and four precious metals. Around 22 per cent of the world’s publicly traded bitcoin has been transacted on Uphold.