This Crypto-Savvy Bank Is Building Bandwidth for Bitcoin Retail Payments

The German bank partially owned by blockchain firms Nimiq, TokenPay and the Litecoin Foundation is planning to process cryptocurrency payments for retailers starting in 2020.

WEG Bank AG CEO Matthias von Hauff told CoinDesk the program is now accepting retailer applications for a sandbox test group, with applications opening to the public in early 2020.

"All we do is provide the regulatory framework in the background, to make sure when the retailer receives crypto, he actually receives fiat in his bank account, if he chooses."

Since program partner Salamantex has already tested such point-of-sale devices in Austria, von Hauff said this new bank "Stakeholder" will allow retailers to send crypto payments to their own wallets or cash out in fiat directly to a bank account.

The program will be administered by WEG Bank AG's new fintech brand, TEN31.

It's unclear which exchange the bank may be able to integrate with in the future.

"What we envision with OASIS is that we are able to create a non-custodial connection between the blockchain world and the traditional bank or bank-account world," Nimiq co-founder Elion Chin told CoinDesk.

"The goal is to have the first OASIS mainnet test with WEG Bank AG and Agora by 2020.".

According to the Nimiq transparency report from September 2019, the project's team spent roughly $3.8 million worth of the $12.8 million garnered during the 2017 ICO on 9.9 percent equity in WEG Bank AG. The other two crypto companies involved with the TEN31 project own the same amount of equity, although the Litecoin Foundation received its shares for free from TokenPay.

Regardless of the many brand names now involved, WEG Bank AG itself will be the regulated entity facilitating compliant services.