Circle expands bitcoin services in Europe

Circle is a bitcoin wallet startup with a popular money-sending application for smartphones called Circle Pay. Users can send money through email and a chat interface, which focuses on user-friendliness and social behaviors like attaching emojis, images, and linking to events.

The company closed its fourth-round of funding in June, attracting US$60 million from many of their existing investors. The round takes their cumulative total to US$136 million, which has allowed Circle to focus on expanding their services, a process first announced in April, before moving onto other continents.

Circle announced an integration with Apple’s iMessage app in September, allowing anyone using a device running iOS 10 to send and receive personal payments in fiat currencies and bitcoin, all from inside one of the world’s most popular chat applications. While looking forward to today’s European launch, the company said that users would be able to “cash out using almost any bank in the US, UK and, soon, Europe.”

“We’re excited to add European cards and the Euro to the growing list of supported card currencies and countries, a list that already includes VISA and Mastercard debit cards from both the US and UK.”
— – Circle

While anyone could previously sign up for a Circle bitcoin wallet account, only US and British residents could link their credit and debit cards. The only fiat currency choices were US dollars and British pounds. The recent expansion now gives users the ability to hold Euros, and offers some the ability to purchase with debit or credit card.

Sixteen countries in Europe now have access to the suite of Circle services, and can link a credit and debit card directly to a Circle wallet, including Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

Residents in ten other European countries can deposit Euros through bank transfer only, including Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the rest of the United Kingdom.

The service introduces a new way to move money between the US and Europe at extremely low rates. Sending an international wire or bank transfer will prompt banks to add extra fees, in the range of 3-4%, on top of the market rate that they charge when converting the currency.

Traditional remittance networks like Western Union are a little better, while the newer digital remittance options like Xoom and Transferwise are even more competitive, typically charging 1-2% above the market rate. Using Circle Pay to send across countries and currencies can be ten times cheaper still, with exchange rates typically around 0.2% to 0.3% above market rate.

“We’re not interested in building yet another walled garden or closed network, we want to enable people to get the benefits of the bitcoin network (near-instant settlement, nearly free transactions, highly secure, global and open) without having to think in a new currency or hold the currency themselves."
— – Jeremy Allaire, Circle CEO

The Circle Pay app offers a rare solution to buying bitcoin very quickly, allowing for very fast bitcoin withdrawals, even for new users. To do so, however, the company has the policy of requiring users to submit a ‘selfie’ for an extra layer of identification first.

While the Boston-based company has had its share of complaints from bitcoin users, most of them point to the focus on serving the mainstream market with fiat currencies. The Circle Pay app defaults to showing a balance in local fiat currency instead of a bitcoin balance.

Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire said on an internet AMA forum that he and his company are big advocates for the use of the bitcoin network as a kind of behind the scenes value transfer protocol for the internet, “We just don’t think that mainstream users interested in ‘digital money’ want a new currency.”

The company also has some stiff competition in Europe. Coinbase has been offering a similar service since August, while many smaller European-based bitcoin services provide similar services, including Cashila, BTCDirect, CoinCorner, and Paymium.

You can buy or sell Bitcoin with Paymium, for example, which also offers market trading with a smartphone app, but you can’t use a credit or debit card. Cashila, which is integrated into the popular Mycelium bitcoin wallet, works in a similar way, but offers bill payments and other money management options as well.

On the other end of the spectrum, Coincorner and BTCDirect both allow several types of payments, including credit and debit cards, but have limited services.

Bitcoin focused exchanges also provide a myriad of options. The leading exchange by Euro volume is Kraken, and the exchange is well established. The exchange doesn’t sell bitcoins instantly, offer bill payments, nor even offer a way to send money like an email. However, it does handle a large amount of the global euro to bitcoin trade, and it’s only one of many that do so. Bitstamp, BtcX, itBit, BTC-e, and at least 28 other exchanges all allow euro trading in the region.