Wirex takes on crypto-friendly Japan with Visa-backed payment card

Another service provider is joining that Visa cryptocurrency card party in Japan.

London-based company Wirex, which offers cloud-based hybrid personal banking platform, has teamed up with Japanese financial services group SBI Holdings to launch a joint venture. The announcement follows the $3 million investment made by SBI Holdings in Wirex’s subsidiary in Japan early this year via its FinTech Fund.

The joint venture, called the SBI Wirex Asia, aims to deliver a Japanese cryptocurrency payment card and develop other co-businesses in the field of cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and payment.

Wirex, which enables over 900,000 customers in 130 countries to use cryptocurrencies on the Visa card networks around the world, is no stranger to Japan’s cryptocurrency sector. In 2016, the UK start-up released a virtual currency credit card via its mobile application.