Crypto exchange, Bitfinex announced on Thursday the enabling of real-time Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments on the platform with its latest partnership with fiat on-ramp services provider OpenPayd.
SEPA allows instant euro-denominated deposits and withdrawals.
“We chose to work with OpenPayd because of its ability to help us access SEPA real-time payment rails and the speed of integration its API enables,” said Bitfinex’s CTO, Paolo Ardoino.
“This collaboration forms part of our continued efforts to provide a premium customer service experience to our growing user base.”
The Need to Enhance Fiat Payments
Support for fiat payments has become a key requirement and a challenge for crypto exchanges. As Bitfinex pointed out, near-instant payments with SEPA will only enhance the client experience on the platform.
Meanwhile, other crypto exchanges with European operations are focusing on bringing SEPA support to their customer base. Last month, Binance tied with Paysafe to enable instant payments for the euro and the British pound. It enabled SEPA for Europe and Faster Payment Services for the United Kingdom.
OpenPayd is offering its services across Europe. Additionally, the company made two key appointments this year: Daniel Belda as the new Head of Product Strategy and Barry O’Sullivan as the Head of Payments Infrastructure.
“The vision of embedded finance is to create a world where anyone building disruptive financial products can simply plug-and-play a fully-functional payments platform and access all the benefits that come with them, and this is exactly what we’ve enabled for Bitfinex,” Iana Dimitrova, the Chief Executive Officer at OpenPayd, said.
“We’re thrilled to be helping one of the world’s largest digital token exchanges to bridge the gap between fiat and crypto. It’s critical that Bitfinex and its customers have access to real-time payment rails and benefit from both improved customer experience and improve their potential to scale.”
