i2c Inc. president Jim McCarthy is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in financial services and knows a few things about cryptocurrency and payment processing. With an endless pool of knowledge and foresight into payment innovation, Jim is a regularly featured guest on CNBC’s television program, “Squawk on the Street.”
On a previous appearance, McCarthy chatted with “Squawk on the Street” hosts about crypto becoming mainstream – essentially powered by cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and “riding” the traditional payment rails for credit cards that have been in place for decades thanks to Visa and Mastercard; a bold prediction given the volatility of the crypto markets.
Since then, i2c decided to dig into the data to gain a clearer understanding of McCarthy’s prediction. The results have been profound. As McCarthy mentioned on his most recent “Squawk on the Street” appearance, “We saw, over the course of 2021, tremendous growth far exceeding traditional credit and debit cards around the globe.”
Amid Bitcoin selloff and general crypto market volatility, i2c discovered that, surprisingly enough, people aren‘t just using cryptocurrencies as a hold of assets anymore. McCarthy continued, “What we‘re seeing is a tremendous amount of spend. If you look at the period from January 2021 to December 2021, we saw 500% growth in the number of [crypto-backed] cards issued and 600% growth in the number of [crypto-backed card] transactions.”
“We‘re seeing a lot of growth regardless of the volatility in the underlying assets.”
– Jim McCarthy on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”
And while the idea of DeFi (decentralized finance) is still largely theoretical at this point according to McCarthy, the i2c report uncovered several unexpected stats around crypto-backed card usage, merchant categories, demographics and loyalty.
Be sure to get your free copy of this first-of-its-kind report on crypto-backed cards, an emerging global payments phenomenon that promises to change the way you think about crypto and credit cards.
i2c is a global provider of highly-configurable payment and banking solutions. Using i2c's proprietary "building block" technology, clients can easily create and manage a comprehensive set of solutions for credit, debit, prepaid, lending and more, quickly and cost-effectively. i2c delivers unparalleled flexibility, agility, security and reliability from a single global SaaS platform. Founded in 2001, and headquartered in Silicon Valley, i2c's next-generation technology supports millions of users in more than 200 countries/territories and across all time zones.
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