Huobi teams up with Solaris to launch crypto debit card in Europe

By Gloria Methri

Huobi Global has partnered with Solaris bank to deliver a crypto-to-fiat debit card that will enable Huobi users to spend digital assets at the point-of-sale globally.

The Visa-approved program will be available to both new and existing users in the European Economic Area (EEA) from Q2 of 2023. They will be able to select and spend from a range of different digital assets linked to their card at the point of sale, via their Huobi Global trading account.

The new functionality is expected to remove friction from the user experience, by saving time when it comes to on/off ramp fiat and digital assets between accounts and cards. Huobi VISA cardholders who pay with Huobi’s platform token Huobi Token (HT) will be rewarded with cashback benefits in accordance with their card levels. Solaris will provide full end-to-end processing and issuing capabilities for the program, including the Visa BIN sponsorship.

Justin Sun, Advisor of Huobi Global said, “Huobi Global highly values our user experience and continuously works to drive improvement for users. This partnership will help us deliver a better experience to our users.”

The Huobi-branded Visa debit cards will offer users a range of loyalty benefits and are powered by Solaris’s Buffer card issuing and secondary authorisation technology. Buffer enables cardholders to make payments via a primary fiat account by connecting to a wallet of value (e.g. digital asset) held in a secondary account to deliver a frictionless payment experience.

Andrea Ramoino, Chief Strategy Officer at Solaris added, “We are excited to be partnering with a market-leading virtual asset exchange to deliver frictionless crypto-to-fiat point-of-sale spending to the Huobi community, through our market-leading Buffer technology. This is just the first step in our partnership as we look ahead to delivering more payment options to users in the EEA region and beyond.”