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Bitcoin and the USA.
Swedish startup Bitrefill, best known for its marketplace letting users spend their crypto on gift cards and mobile top-ups, today announced that its Pay Bill service is now available to users in the U.S.
Pay Bill lets people pay their bills and other payments with a selection of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies. Aside from Bitcoin, those include Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, DASH, and the Tether (USDT) stablecoin.
The service works for credit card bills, utilities, auto loans, healthcare, mortgage, and social security payments, with integrations through T-Mobile, American Express, State Farm, Wells Fargo, United Healthcare, and Liberty Mutual, among others.
Bitrefill said that its Pay Bill service would also let users pay property and other taxes, and even funeral service payments, in crypto.
“They say there are only two certain things in life - death and taxes,” said Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill. “Now you can pay both your tax and funeral costs with crypto.”
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The Pay Bill service was first launched in El Salvador after the Latin American nation made Bitcoin legal tender last September and, as Bitrefill claims, has been growing at a rate of 100-200% per month since then, according to Bitrefill.
For its American launch, Bitrefill partnered with Arcus Financial, a regulated payments platform that offers cash-in and cash-out services for billers, retailers, and financial institutions in the U.S and Mexico, Kotljar told Decrypt.
Last November, the New York-based company was acquired by MasterCard, allowing the payments giant to expand its real-time retail payment services further into the Latin American market.
“With Bitrefill’s Bill Pay, everyone in the U.S. will soon have the same opportunity as in El Salvador to live on crypto and leave your bank,” added Bitrefill’s chief.
The new service will also be available in Bitrefill’s iOS and Android apps; however, there’s a waitlist on a first-come, first-served basis due to some scalability constraints.
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