American Express will reward users with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

American Express will offer a new card in collaboration with the company Abra, which specializes in products related to the use of cryptocurrencies, which will allow its users to receive bitcoin rewards for every purchase made. 

The announcement of the new card was made at the Consensus Conferences in Austin, Texas. There, Abra CEO Bill Barhydt presented the details of the new product to the media. 

The official launch of the card is scheduled for the end of the year, even if a precise date has not been indicated, nor which users will be able to use it.  

What has been made clear is that while the rewards will be in cryptocurrencies, the consumption will be in fiat currency. Furthermore, it has been specified that any purchase will generate rewards, regardless of the amount spent and the good or service paid. 

In addition to Bitcoin, users of the new American Express card will be able to exchange their rewards for one of the more than 100 cryptocurrencies available on the Abra platform. According to Abra's CEO, such exchanges will not require payment of transaction fees.

In addition, American Express customers with this card will have the benefits that its products traditionally offer. These include offers for payment for products and travel, as well as for secure purchases. 

Barhydt said the launch of this new product in partnership with American Express "represents another step towards Abra's goal of offering instant line of credit at the point of sale."

Abra enables NFT trading on its app

This comes in addition to the announcement of a new tool on its platform that will allow the purchase and sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Safekeeping of NFTs purchased by Abra application users will be in the hands of the company. This means that the buyer will not have full control of the token. Kind of like with other popular trading platforms like Bitcoin system.

A bitcoiner proverb says “if they are not your keys, they are not your bitcoins”. In this case, the same reasoning could be applied to holding tokens on such platforms. However, those who are comfortable with this system may have this option in the near future. 

More bitcoin reward cards ahead of American Express 

The US card issuer American Express is not the first company to offer rewards in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to users of its products. We reported in November 2021 that the Argentine company Lemon would be rewarding its users with BTC. 

It is an international debit card called the Lemon Card, which would allow its holders to obtain a return in bitcoin equal to 2% of their consumption. The card can be used at any business that accepts Visa cards and payments can be made in Argentine pesos, as well as USDT and DAI stablecoins. 

The Gemini exchange, founded by the Winklevoss brothers, has also announced the launch of a bitcoin reward card for its users. In this case, it is a Mastercard credit card with which users can opt for BTC refunds of up to 3% of their purchases.