Aug 14, 2020 at 15:00 UTCUpdated Aug 14, 2020 at 16:39 UTC
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Crypto payments startup Wyre is offering white-labeled savings accounts that dole out interest on crypto, the company announced Friday.
Wyre’s client list includes startups including crypto custody firm Casa, wallet provider BRD and traditional enterprises such as banks.
“Partners of Wyre are able to offer their users a crypto savings account by simply creating a new savings sub-wallet via the Wyre API,” the company wrote.
The new product’s interest rates are meant to be more stable than interest rates at crypto lenders because Wyre will manage funds between MakerDAO, Compound and two centralized crypto lenders, said Jack Jia, Wyre’s vice president of business.
Like most things in crypto, the interest rates at crypto lenders are vulnerable to market drops or borrower supply. With Wyre’s new savings product, called Wyre Savings API, the company is aiming “to offer stable yield that has the least counterparty risk,” Jia said.
Read more: BRD Partners With Wyre to Build Bank Transfer Wallet Feature
For the new product, Wyre is only working with crypto lenders that have lending licenses, SOC1 and SOC2 audits and work with licensed custodians.
“In the traditional markets we’re seeing a lot of instability and Treasury yields are down,” Jia said. “There are a lot more traditional financial institutions looking for yield.”
In the initial stages of the product’s development, Jia’s team had envisioned releasing the product as a smart contract but chose an application programming interface (API) instead to make it more accessible to businesses unfamiliar with crypto, he added.
As of Aug. 12, interest rates were 2.4% on bitcoin (BTC), 2.4% on wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), 3.3% on ether (ETH), 5.8% on USDC and 5.7% on dai. Wyre has plans to roll out more tokens in the future.
Funds can be pulled out any time, and interest is accrued instantly and paid out weekly on the product, Jia said.
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