Australian startup CoinJar have unveiled the country’s first bitcoin EFTPOS card, which allows the digital currency to be converted to Australian dollars and spent in virtually any retail outlet that offers debit card transactions.
CoinJar Swipe will begin its trial run today, with the card being delivered to 100 pre-registered CoinJar DNA members.
Co-founder and CEO of CoinJar Asher Tan says that CoinJar Swipe will ‘demystify’ the digital currency.
“We created Swipe because we simply wanted to make it easier for our customers to spend their bitcoin,” Mr Tan says. “Swipe demystifies bitcoin and makes it accessible to everyone through a secure platform. Our team is really excited about Swipe, and we look forward to receiving feedback from our customers.”
CoinJar state that bitcoins are currently being used by an estimated half a million Australians, with numbers rising rapidly.
The CoinJar Swipe bitcoin debit card comes almost a month after the Australian Taxation Office ruled that they did not consider bitcoin to be ‘neither money nor a foreign currency’ and that ‘the supply of bitcoin is not a financial supply for goods and services tax purposes’.
“Bitcoin is, however, an asset for capital gains tax purposes,” the ATO said.
In the past year alone, CoinJar says it has processed more than $50 million worth of bitcoin transactions for over 30,000 individual and business customers.
