Gnosis Lets Crypto Users Make Everyday Purchases From Wallets With Visa

Gnosis, a sidechain to Ethereum, says a pair of new product offerings could let consumers with crypto wallets pay for online purchases using stablecoins and Visa’s payment system.

Gnosis announced Monday it is releasing Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Card, the first decentralized payment network integrating with a traditional payment processor and the first Visa-certified consumer debit card directly connected to an on-chain self-custodial wallet, according to a Gnosis press release.

Gnosis Card, which uses the Visa payment system, will be a debit card directly connected to a user’s on-chain account, built on the Gnosis Pay decentralized payment network, according to Gnosis. Users’ wallets – in this case Safe wallets – will act like a bank account, and every Gnosis Card will be connected to the user’s Safe account.

Gnosis Pay will also operate as a layer 2 to the Gnosis chain, therefore enabling faster and cheaper transactions.

“From a user experience point of view, it's exactly the same experiences everyone's used to but under the hood of using crypto to settle your payments,” Stefan George, co-founder of Gnosis and chief technology officer of Gnosis Pay, told CoinDesk.

The birth of Gnosis Card came after George was on a ski trip in the French Alps and exchanged ideas with an executive at payment processor SaltPay. George was explaining how blockchain technology works and how it could function in everyday life.

“The idea came that we should try to actually work together to kind of bridge the world between what they are doing and what we are doing. Ultimately, I think that's the only way we can actually get more adoption for crypto,” George told CoinDesk. “We have to build bridges to the old world.”

Gnosis spun out Safe as a separate business last July, but close ties between the two entities remained, as is apparent with the use of Safe wallets in Gnosis’ latest products.

“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” George said. “Safe is supporting Gnosis Pay through the development they're doing on the smart contracts, which we are now leveraging for every single card that's being shipped.”

Read more: Gnosis Safe Rebrands as Safe, Raises $100M