By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 19th, 2024
Today, Ziglu has announced that its customers can send cryptocurrency to other people, as well as buy and sell crypto from its app.
The United Kingdom-based challenger bank Ziglu has secured the Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and aims to reach about 100 million customers in the next 7 years. The FCA license granted on September 1 will allow Ziglu to issue e-money and provide payment services. The startup’s broad operations will also encompass cryptocurrency services.
Ziglu Bank follows after the likes of Revolut bank, with the mission to provide financial services in a way to offer competitive fees and services to customers. Today, the bank announced that you can send cryptocurrency to other people, as well as buy and sell crypto from its app. While this launch is a stride well applauded, Ziglu has an embargo in the scope of this peer-to-peer as users cannot send cryptocurrencies to other wallets outside of the app.
While media reports indicate that the Ziglu team understands the functionality of sending cryptocurrencies to other wallets, Decrypt reported that the challenger bank compromised the development of this feature to quickly enter the markets. Ziglu’s compromise was confirmed, in part, “to get to the market fast,” as noted by Nick Turner-Samuels Ziglu’s Chief Product Officer, He further explained that this was done to “prove that we can find a relative product-market fit sooner, [and to] test the app, and to integrate [crypto] as quickly as possible.”
Ziglu License Process, Competition, and Aims
The coming of Ziglu has ushered in another crypto-centric challenger bank since 2016 after Revolut. Commenting on the company’s delayed EMI licensing process, Ziglu founder and CEO Mark Hipperson said that “the [authorization] process is long, arduous, and hard, I wouldn’t want it any other way” because it shows the FCA selects companies that are going to take “governance, compliance, risk management, and customer data really seriously.”
As Hipperson explained, the FCA paid detailed attention to its applications because of its business model involving cryptocurrencies for which the FCA is highly critical of. Hipperson went on to say that the FCA’s crypto team also reviewed Ziglu’s licensing application since the firm provides both fiat and crypto services. Ziglu also had to comply with the fifth anti-money laundering directive (AMLD5) rules. This process took about three to four months.
The Ziglu app currently supports about four cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), for P2P payments. The app also supports the British pound (GBP) fiat currency.
Ziglu’s core competitor, Revolut bank has made daring advances in its almost five years of operations expanding into foreign markets including Australia and the company though indigenous to the UK also has expansion plans. As the Block reported, Ziglu is billed to expand into certain European countries later this month and then the rest of Europe by Q4 2020 or early Q1 2021, according to Hipperson. “And then we’ll be looking to push it into the [United] States in the first half of next year,” added he.