Gnosis announces the imminent release of Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Card.
Gnosis Pay is the first decentralized payment network allowing web3 developers to integrate with a range of traditional payment schemes including Visa, and onboard the next millions of uninitiated users to tap into the web3 economy. Gnosis Card is the world’s first officially Visa-certified self-custodied consumer debit card directly connected to an on-chain self-custodial wallet instead of a traditional bank account, built on the Gnosis Pay decentralized payment network.
Gnosis Pay allows cardholders to spend anywhere Visa is accepted with the same quick, seamless transactions they expect from a traditional debit card. Powered by the next generation of web3 infrastructure, Gnosis Pay combines Visa Debit technology with the smart contract wallet and account abstraction infrastructure Project Safe (previously Gnosis incubated and industry standard). Pay deploys a custom-built L2 on Gnosis Chain to safeguard compliance and allow the network to scale sufficiently to process the demands placed on payment networks — Visa processes several thousand transactions per second.
Connecting the onchain and offchain worlds has been difficult so far, relying solely on centralized points of failure. A decade in, the industry and users have had to operate largely in isolation from the traditional economy. As payments are the backbone of the world’s GDP, they have the potential to make the single biggest impact in onboarding everyday users into a more ownership-driven digital economy. Gnosis Pay forges this connection between the on and offchain worlds.
Marcos Nunes, co-founder and CEO of Gnosis Pay, shared, “To date, most fiat-to-crypto on-ramps exist only on exchanges, which appeals primarily to traders and not to regular retail users. We’re pleased to introduce Gnosis Card to help users tear down the wall between their on and offchain activities.”
Nunes added, “With the continued accumulation of assets in self-custodial wallets, 2023 will undoubtedly be the year of self-custodial payments entering the mainstream. Gnosis Pay offers the most robust self-custodial solution for retail users who wish to utilize their digital assets in the fiat world.
KYT and KYC compliant, with fraud monitoring just like a traditional Visa card, Gnosis Pay users also benefit from the onchain shared security model of Gnosis Chain, now the second most decentralized network after Ethereum with over 125K validators in 79 countries.
Using Pay, be it DAOs or NFT collectives, anyone can issue a product similar to Gnosis Card to their own users. By providing the tooling and APIs, Pay is set to serve third-party wallets to let them offer their users complete control of their digital assets all the way to the point of sale. Gnosis Cards are designed to be fully customizable and personalizable.
Stefan George, Gnosis co-founder and CTO of Gnosis Pay, added, “Gnosis’ commitment to decentralization means that we want others to benefit from Gnosis Pay. We allow anyone who wants to integrate the Gnosis Pay technology to issue their own cards to their own users. Our mission is to contribute to the industry as a whole and drive innovation across the space, providing new ways to bridge the gap between onchain and offchain user experiences. By opening this tech to all who wish to use it, we are bringing real-world blockchain utility to the mainstream.”
Pay is establishing relationships with regulated partners around the world that are licensed and authorised to issue payment cards and electronic money across various jurisdictions. The Gnosis Card will be issued by a regulated Electronic Money Institution, initially launching exclusively in the UK and Europe, with the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, and Hong Kong soon to follow.