During the Blockchain Futurist conference in Toronto, BRD, a Switzerland-headquartered company that provides a wallet for digital currencies, announced a partnership with Toronto-based Coinberry, making it the exclusive bank partner for Canada.
Coinberry is a federally-registered crypto trading platform, allowing users to immediately access multiple exchanges and get the best prices from several exchanges with its algorithm. Through the partnership, Canadian customers of BRD can use e-Transfers to fund crypto purchases, including bitcoin and Ethereum.
The partnership is expected to expose BRD’s 1.2 million total users to the Canadian platform. Coinberry is replacing a former US partner that was powering BRD’s Canadian operations; previously, Canadians had to use the US partner’s banking login integration (ETF) to facilitate purchases in BRD. BRD’s mobile app will also be available for all Coinberry customers as part of its joint go-to-market strategy.
Speaking with BetaKit, BRD head of business development Peter Shanley indicated that the partnership was an opportunity to continue bridging the gap between the fiat and crypto world, and make the latter more accessible. Canada is BRD’s #3 country by unique transacting customers, and #2 by total transactions. For context, BRD is currently available in over 170 countries, working to partner with other FinTech companies worldwide to build a decentralized platform.
“We have a global audience, and fiat services on-ramps and off-ramps are something top of mind for anyone who’s investing in the space,” Shanley said. “We have offices all around the world, but we can’t be everywhere. So to find trusted, awesome partners and platforms who kind of ascribe to our kind of needs and values of simplicity design, privacy, security, in markets where we don’t have a presence… is a match made in heaven.”
While tension between incumbents like banks and emerging startups have been well-documented over the past few years, the Coinberry and BRD teams instead are keen to point out the willingness of the crypto space to cooperate. In an interview, president and co-founder Andrei Poliakov said that the company is crypto-agnostic, and is planning to partner with other wallets over the coming year.
“BRD is a really trusted brand name in this space and a really trusted product,” Poliakov said. “[At], Coinberry we are federally registered with the Canadian regulatory authorities’ platform, so we are trusted on the fiat. To have this trust come together is very important to our users and people who want to get into this space, especially early on in the game.”
The Coinberry and BRD offering is expected to go live in Q4 2018.