Goodbye to copying and pasting endless strings of numbers and letters and green light to one-click transfers and a single point of access to your crypto world. Open Banking, now a daily occurrence in traditional finance, lands in the world of innovative finance. Conio (the first Italian Bitcoin wallet, owned by Poste Italiane and Banca Generali) and Mesh (an American fintech integrated with over 300 leading exchanges) launch the first Open Banking for Bitcoin in Europe. “A service that allows you to aggregate accounts and movements with a single point of access from where you control everything,” explains Orlando Merone, general manager of Conio
Conio’s over 430,000 customers will be able to connect their Bitcoin wallets with the main digital asset exchange platforms. A single access point. At the beginning there will be ten connected global crypto platforms: Binance, Bitfinex, Bistamp, Bybit, Coinbase, Houbi, Kraken, Kucoin, Okx, Robinhood. When trading, buying or exchanging bitcoins, you usually use different global platforms and open banking gives you the possibility of having a custody independent from these platforms and where you can also connect all your accounts, so you can view your balances, keep track of your portfolio on the various assets and transfer your bitcoins with a tap. Will it be enough to press a button, a bit like PayPal? “It’s a very similar user experience because it’s simplified to the max. But we’re not talking about instant transfers, they also require tens of minutes”, Merone clarifies.
The goal is to eliminate the friction that still characterizes the bitcoin transfer process. Friction that is mainly due to difficulties, especially for those who are not familiar with the sector, in correctly typing long and complex addresses (more than one IBAN), in having to copy and paste several times and in having to use QR codes. In addition, all of this on platforms in English almost always. And when you type an incorrect address, an irreparable error is generated, because a transfer that has taken place cannot be recalled.
There are over 3.6 million Italians who own cryptocurrencies according to the Blockchain and Web3 Observatory of the School of Management of the Polytechnic University of Milan. Three are the most popular ways to make purchases. 32% bought on a cryptocurrency exchange, 17% with a wallet service with direct purchase, 38% through traditional trading services and banking apps.
Risks? “You have to use the same precautions that we have with traditional tools. So avoid sharing access to your accounts, do not respond to messages on WhatsApp, Telegram and social media and be wary of third parties who invite you to make transactions with your wallet. Classic tax fraud affects digital tools like others. And then the suggestion is not to rely on the same platforms where you trade for the custody of your bitcoins, but to choose an independent custody,” Merone advises. Open Banking means having a single access point and therefore a constant overview of your movements, also in an anti-fraud perspective. According to research conducted by Adan in collaboration with KPMG, 66% of those who hold cryptocurrencies use the most common exchanges to store Bitcoin and their digital assets, instead of a personal wallet. And the same thing happens in other countries: in Germany 59%, in France 63%, in the Netherlands as much as 83%.
