Gnosis Card: The first Visa debit card tied to your wallet is coming

LeftOfCenter

2023-07-18 19:11

Read this article in 7 Minutes

AI summary

View the summary

Written by: LeftOfCenter, BlockBeats

On July 17, Ethereum sidechain Gnosis announced the release of a crypto debit card called Gnosis Card, a Visa debit card directly linked to the user's on-chain account and built on a second-layer chain called Gnosis Pay, aiming to achieve the goal of using cryptocurrencies like using fiat currencies.

Gnosis Pay is a decentralized payment network developed by the Gnosis team. It connects the payment system of the fiat world on one end and the on-chain world on the other end. It transfers crypto assets back and forth on various mainstream chains through Polygon's zkEVM underlying infrastructure, truly realizing the bridge between on-chain and off-chain.

If cryptocurrencies and traditional financial systems were still in a state of separation before, then Gnosis Pay is a bridge that truly connects Crypto and traditional economy.

Gnosis Pay Introduction

According to the official announcement, Gnosis Card allows users to spend digital assets in their wallets at any store that supports Visa cards, to meet the needs of Web3 users to use stablecoins to pay for goods in daily life.

Perhaps the adoption of the offline physical world is still a long way off, but through this real-time conversion of fiat currency to physical assets, ordinary users can also realize the freedom of crypto asset consumption in the real world. Thanks to the Gnosis Chain second-layer chain developed by the team, the gas fee cost for each transaction is less than 0.1 US dollars, and the chain arrives in seconds.

In fact, Gnosis Card is a physical card, priced at 30 euros, which can be bound to AppplePay/GooglePay, etc., and the other end can be used with any crypto wallet (Metamask, etc.).

Gnosis Card will be launched in the UK and EU first, with plans to expand to Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and Hong Kong. Gnosis Pay also plans to launch in the US at the end of the third quarter of this year, and will work with MakerDAO to provide stablecoin Dai as a credit card payment option.

Gnosis Pay Technical Architecture

Gnosis Card is powered by Gnosis Pay, a decentralized payment network developed by Gnosis itself. It is based on Polygon's zkEVM. As a second-layer chain, it supports any EVM-compatible first-layer network, which can achieve faster and cheaper transactions than the first-layer chain.

Whether it is the off-chain banking system, Visa, MasterCard, Alipay, etc., they can interact directly with this L2 payment network, and the user's Safe contract payment wallet runs on this L2.

It is worth noting that as one of the important partners of Gnosis Card, the euro stablecoin EURe issued by Monerium will be used by Gnosis Pay for on-chain and off-chain payments to reduce bridging risks. At the same time, Monerium supports users to associate crypto wallets with international bank accounts or IBANs. Correspondingly, each Gnosis card will be associated with a Safe wallet account.

When a user transfers money from a bank account to an IBAN associated with a wallet, EURes stablecoins will be automatically minted on blockchains such as Ethereum and Gnosis and displayed in the wallet. Conversely, when a user spends from the wallet, the stablecoin EURe will be destroyed and the euro will be sent to the user's bank account accordingly.

Although there is such a complex operation process behind it, connecting the world of "on-chain" and "off-chain", "fiat currency" and "physical", involving the settlement and payment of the first and second layers, for consumer users, the experience is as smooth and convenient as the traditional use of credit cards and WeChat payments. According to the team's live demonstration at the EthCC speech, the transfer transaction can be completed in about one or two seconds, and the gas fee cost is less than 0.1 US dollars.

Developer Tools and Revenue Sources

Gnosis Pay has also launched a set of developer tools that allow crypto wallets to develop customized versions of Gnosis Card without going through the various limitations of traditional online payment systems. For example, MetaMask can issue a MetaMask card simply by using the API and supporting tools provided by Gnosis Pay.

This will lower the barriers to entry and costs for the fintech industry. In addition, Gnosis Pay will also collect part of the processing fees from the issuers of custom card wallets. In addition, other sources of income include transaction fees and business demand generated by Gnosis's native GMO token.