Circle, a blockchain based payments app, has announced the launch of its social payment apps in Spain and Ireland.
With this expansion, people these countries will be able to connect any Spanish or Irish bank account to Circle to send and receive p2p payments, with native Euro support, to friends and family within their countries and across borders instantly, at the best exchange rate available to consumers, with zero fees.
“Our product launches in Spain and Ireland take another step toward realizing our vision of instant, global, free and fun consumer payments”, Circle co-founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville said in a blog post.
They added that Circle’s customers based in UK and US who hold £ and $ will now be able to send and receive Euros with customers in Spain or Ireland “at the speed and convenience of the internet”.
Currently, for wire or bank transfers across currencies, banks add an additional 3-4% on top of the market rate of the currency, along with a “one-time fees” added quite often. Circle noted that legacy money transfer companies charge upwards of 10% above the market rate, while newer ‘Digital Money Transfer’ companies are pricing typically 1-2% above the market rate.
“At Circle, we aim to deliver the best rate possible in the world, with Circle’s exchange rate typically being around 0.2% to 0.3% above the market rate”, Allaire and Neville added.
To that end, they said that Circle is introducing FX pricing that aims to commoditize consumer value exchange across currencies. The co-founders believe that the ‘spread’ paid by consumers when exchanging value across currencies will not only approach zero, but reach zero, just as the cost of a voice chat, a text message and an email have reached zero.
“All of this is expressed with a delightful consumer experience, accessible via the Web and through native iOS and Android Apps. Customers can easily connect any bank debit card to fund and receive payments”, they added.
Moreover, with the launch of Circle for iMessage, any iOS 10 customer can use Circle directly from within iMessage, in the context of conversations with friends and family, without leaving iMessage and without launching a separate app.
In the forthcoming months, Circle plans to expand its services to more countries in the European Union.
