Crypto Custody Firm Fireblocks Furthers Push Into Payments With Tools Suite

Crypto custody tech provider Fireblocks has launched a suite of tools to facilitate customer and vendor adoption of cryptocurrency payments regardless of their location, the company said Monday.

The Fireblocks Payments Engine is intended to allow the company’s clients to process digital payments more quickly and securely, offering merchants immediate access to fiat-to-stablecoin conversion for customer payments. By circumventing traditional banking networks, the product would enable users sending funds abroad to convert money from one fiat currency to another in minutes instead of days and for lower fees.

The company said its Payments Engine – which allows clients to make payments in USD coin (USDC), among other cryptos – will reach potential customers globally through Fireblocks’ partnerships with major payment service providers like World Pay and Checkout.com.

To date, Checkout.com has facilitated settlement of more than $1 billion in a beta program of the new service using USDC, according to the statement.

Ran Goldi, vice president and head of payments at Fireblocks, said the payment system’s ability to transport money quickly from point A to Z could transform the way merchants operate their businesses by improving cash flow.

“Merchants can now get paid within a few hours instead of a few days, and that's power to a merchant,” Goldi told CoinDesk. “If you're a business, cash flow is a big deal for you and you want to have as much cash as possible so you could buy more inventory, pay more suppliers [and] pay your employees.”

Goldi says Fireblocks’ goal in launching the tool suite is to arm payment service providers with the infrastructure upon which they can build their crypto payment products. Although the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment for everyday goods is still in its early stages, Goldi said it is important for Fireblocks to lay the groundwork now for what he expects will soon be much wider adoption of cryptocurrencies.

“People won’t start paying with [crypto] in the U.S. tomorrow morning because we have Apple Pay and Google Pay,” said Goldi. “But I'm 100% certain that over the next five to 10 years, the technology stack of everything that's finance will digitize currencies, and then they will need this infrastructure that we've created to accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment.”

Fireblocks’ further push into the crypto payments market comes on the heels of the company’s acquisition of payments technology firm First Digital earlier this year. Following the purchase, Fireblocks has focused on exploring crypto use cases designed to resolve cross-border payment issues and other transnational money transfer problems.

Read More: Fireblocks Deepens Payments Push With Checkout.com USDC Settlement