Auckland-based Easy Crypto will offer a digital currency backed one-to-one to the New Zealand dollar. Photo: 123RF
New Zealand's largest cryptocurrency retailer is launching its first stablecoin as a practical and viable choice for transactions.
Auckland-based Easy Crypto will offer its NZDD coin, backed one-to-one to the New Zealand dollar, to money held in a local bank account.
Chief executive Janine Grainger said stablecoin is a cryptocurrency which can bridge the gap between traditional finance and the digital age because it was still tied to an existing asset.
"If you're already in crypto assets it's a really easy way to move in and out of the stable-store-a-value into the more volatile currencies, and you can do that near-instantly 24/7 with very low fees.
"I'm a firm believer that assets are increasingly digitising, and over the next 10 to 20 years we'll see most assets go onto digital forms into some sort of tokenised version of assets."
She was seeing a growing number of businesses and institutional customers turn to cryptocurrency to manage their payments and billing.
"People doing business internationally are taking advantage of the lower fees for cross-border payments.
"More businesses are accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment and a lot of customers who are doing business internationally are paying or billing customers in crypto assets."
Easy Crypto is also launching a digital wallet for customers to streamline safe storage of their assets online.
"Managing your crypto shouldn't be daunting; and you certainly shouldn't need a collection of different wallets," Grainger said.
"We wanted to simplify the crypto experience, offering a secure, all-in-one solution to effortlessly and securely store and manage digital assets for both beginners and seasoned crypto investors."
Easy Crypto's exchange launched six years ago and has since set up shop in Australia and South Africa, with more than 100,000 people among its users.
"We have transacted over $2 billion in total sales to date," Grainger said.