Canadian Startup Launches World’s First Bitcoin To PayPal Exchange

Coinizy, a Canada-based Bitcoin startup founded by Yannick Losbar, recently launched the world’s first Bitcoin to PayPal exchange option. Bitcoinist reported that the platform was unveiled by Losbar during a live demonstration at the Parisian Maison du Bitcoin. It promises to be the fastest and easiest way to convert Bitcoin to fiat money.

“Up until now, 99% of the Bitcoin exchanges only offered the good old wire transfer, when one wanted to withdraw the funds he obtained by converting some bitcoins. This excludes de facto the 2.5bn unbanked people, as well as most of the teenagers, which is very unfortunate since this part of the population could represent the next potential wave of Bitcoin adopters,” Bitcoinist quoted Losbar.

The startup has implemented 7 different withdrawal possibilities, “with each one potentially corresponding to a particular use case”, Bitcoinist reported. Users can choose from PayPal and Okpay e-wallets, Western Union, and ecommerce shoppers might consider the prepaid, debit-card offers. The platform offers a wide range of prepaid Bitcoin debit cards in the industry – two plastic cards and one virtual card instantly generated and delivered via email – and aims to meet the as much consumer needs as possible.

Moreover, Coinizy users also don’t have to go though the extensive identity documentation process before depositing their first Millibitcoins on the platform.

“The fact that we don’t accept any fiat currency as a depositing method led us to be exempted by the Canadian Financial Services Regulation Authority, FINTRAC, from the need to register as a Money Services Business and all the heavy additional compliance requirements that necessarily comes along,” Losbar said.

Interestingly, regarding the storage of user-deposited Bitcoins Losbar said:

“We don’t hold any! Since we only provide fiat currency withdrawals, there’s no need to keep the Bitcoins deposited by our customers. Therefore, they are immediately sold during the depositing process, and we do not even have the control over them during a single second since all deposits are handled by our partner and bitcoin processor, Snapcard”.

In 2011, Losbar launched one of the first "Mobile phone credit to Paypal" services in the world, NoelCash, to enable teenagers and other unbanked populations to fund their PayPal accounts in a quick and easy way. Following the sale of NoelCash in 2014, he discovered the world of bitcoin and realized how inconvenient the existing buying/selling methods were, according to Coinizy website.