USAA Adds Bitcoin Balance Check Option for Coinbase Users

UPDATE (19th October 10:50 BST): This piece has been updated with an image from the USAA/Coinbase integration.

American financial services company USAA is rolling out a pilot program that will let some of its customers view their Coinbase bitcoin balances through their USAA online and mobile accounts.

The pilot, as outlined in a new blog post from Coinbase, represents a small but deliberate move by the US military-focused insurer to tap interest in bitcoin among its customer base. In an interview with CoinDesk, USAA framed the pilot – which only allows view-only balance checks with no transaction support at this time – as a means to further experiment with the technology.

Declining to offer specific numbers, the company said that it was choosing customers that have expressed an interest in digital currency in the past. The pilot was previously made available to employees in September, as well as to select testers, followed by the full roll-out this week.

In its blog post, Coinbase shared a gif of how the dashboard tool will work:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Coinbase gif[/caption]

USAA was one of several firms to invest in Coinbase's $75 million Series C funding round, telling CoinDesk at the time that its customer base was "more actively engaged in bitcoin than the average consumer".

The company has since begun leveraging this interest and its relationship with Coinbase to further experiment with bitcoin and the blockchain.

Images via USAA, Shutterstock