Bitcoin Forum

Guys, we will be launching a prepaid card in November/early December in the EU. It will be linked to the user's Bitvalex account and will allow spending cryptocurrencies without the necessity of having a bank account. Basically, we were wondering what is the % of people that would be interested in having one? How many people actually already have one and what do they like/dislike the most about it? This way we can tailor our offering to what is really valued and important.

Thanks so much for your help!

Regards,
Petya

Other services like Xapo, Wirex, and Crypto.com are already providing the same services. Why should people use your service instead of the existing and more reputable ones?

Also, move this topic to the Service Discussion section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=85.0

The move option is on the lower left side of this page.

If you really think that you can beat or be at level of the first ones who do this why not? If you think you can provide better service go pursue it, if it is what you really want go. Competition on prepaidcards/visa for cryptocurrency spending is still small and just few service provider of it is up now you can try to launch this kind of business.

It's good to have more options in the market to make it easier transact using bitcoin. I can't say how much the percentage,  but you will find out as time goes on.
How long bitvalex-exchange has been operating in crypto sphere?
I found that currently, bitvalex has 2 team members, CEO Nick Iliev and Founders Gary Guerassimov, how many employees?

Only if you could provide competitive fees when paying or withdrawing in currencies other than USD or EUR.

you want honest opinion, right? Plastic cards are limited to a few countries, for people living in my country, the cards are not supported, and I do not understand why more companies are just emerging that will only offer the cards to the same few countries? How does your company emerge to succeed in a market so limited and full of other companies already established for years?

Once your company has launched the service in the EU community, wait for customer's feedback and check what's their common concern.

By collecting and gathering feedback, the company will have some insights about people's preferences that might help you on what else should be done. If the company is planning on launching it globally in the future, at least you should aim first for being one of the reputable service providers in that region.

I'd be much more interested in a virtual card with BTC/ETH deposit options or at least BTC, otherwise no.

Most of your competitors don't offer their service to worldwide customers, so if you do then you may get a good response and if you don't keep KYC thingy then you will get the best response.  ::)

With Coinbase, Bitwala, and Wirex around, it's a challenge to compete with the existing services. If you have nothing outstanding people won't be interested. Usually, people aren't looking for a card with thousand of features, just a card working as advertised and with cheap fees, (Anonymous cards are a big plus for some people)

Monthly service charge fee   2.00 EUR
Card load fee   0.20%
ATM Withdrawal in the EU/outside the EU   2% min 2.00 EUR / 3% min 5.00 EUR
POS fee in the EU/outside the EU   0.30% / 0.80%

The fees are so high, omg even a fee for POS? Even a bank has never done this to me before.

I see Thomson Reuters as a partner, what is the partnership?

If you aren't trusted enough in the crypto community then it would really be hard for you to grab some market share from the well reputable ones. For one if you lower your fees compared to them it would create more suspicion rather than attraction towards your prepaid card. There is also an issue about the KYC process since you will be launching in EU countries then for sure that your KYC process would be much more stricter and for a starting business like you this is also a bad sign since your potential users would be a bit hesitant handing out their personal info to a less known company. So I really think you need to focus more on gaining trust rather than having an attractive fees.

There are many people here looking for prepaid card also VCC they mostly are IMs. I'm also interested but you need to allow other countries to have this even if its just a virtual one.

I have many friends in IM who looking for this but they are looking for cheaper ones with less fee because they use it on a daily basis for marketing purposes.

Notify me if when is the exact launch date of this so that I can tell my friends about this to test.

I like competition within crypto as that leads to better services at lower cost, but I don't see anything unique about this service.... there is nothing that would draw me to your service over the others already available.

Most of the available options have been operational for a good while, so they have had the time to build a reputation for their service, while your service hasn't even launched yet.... it's going to be a tough job to gain any share without innovation.

That's more like a dream to never come true than something we'll see become reality, especially with how it directly triggers governments to go after you as business and shut down your operations.

Where do you see the fees? I can't find them anywhere on their site. If you need to log in, does it say anything about currency conversion fees?

edit: thx, don't know why they have prepaid card fees on a separate page. So in my case I'd usually be paying 2.8-3.3% for PoS fees in total or 4.5-5.5% fees in total when withdrawing through an ATM due to currency conversion fees.

I am already using a prepaid card from Xapo and if you are able to come up with a prepaid card with decent fees then you will get more customers, i have not used your site and when you come up with the card and if there are good reviews then i will definitely use your card, there are some merchants that already provide prepaid cards but we like to have more options to choose.

This is the Faq : https://bitvalex.com/faq/fees

here is the debit card fees : https://bitvalex.com/service/prepaid-debit-card

You do not need to log in to see their fee structure.

It could theoretically work if the company issuing them allows you to surf on their name and whatnot to conduct payments, similar to how domain privacy works, but in this case I don't see that happen with how the company will be held responsible for any misuse or breach of Visa's or MasterCard's terms by the people who use these prepaid cards.

More realistically speaking, with all the kyc and aml bs, it's probably safe to assume that Visa and MasterCard will oblige the company to actually subject their users to these verification procedures. There is no way to escape from kyc and aml nowadays when it comes to any financial service playing by the rules. We're trapped.

I would actually be happy to pay more in fees if such card came to exist. It's a pretty badass product.

The way the questions are written is intended to fool your customers, but you'll be fooling yourself at the end. (So I didn't vote there).
I would be interested in pre-paid card, but only if the fees are significantly lower than what I have now (Wirex and AdvCash).
But from what I've read your fees are higher than the competition's; so I'm not interested anymore.

Good that you are considering this. It shows a business looking beyond what its currently doing but projecting into the future having estimated how the growth will come. The question you asked on what percentage, I don't think that should be what the potential client should be the ones to provide because if you leave it to them, then we can as well ask it for free. What should be done is to look at other similar service providers to know the charges they put on their card and how you can introduce your own penetrating price.

I've found your exchange based in Estonia, and it looks decent, but just not enough market volume.

I'm also unable to find the fees that you charge your customers unless I sign up, and I'd rather prefer to not do that with a smaller exchange, it also says you have a pre-paid debit card with the following features available.

This is all fine, and is usually what most other companies like Xapo and Wirex offer, so what makes this better? What even are your fees?