The Mastercard powered debit card offers non-custodial crypto payments that can instantly settle on-chain
Lisbon – Today, Pera Wallet announced its Pera Card, a Mastercard enabled debit card available on the Algorand (ALGO) blockchain in partnership with Immersve.
The card will be available in Immersve’s licensed jurisdictions, starting with United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and New Zealand. Pera Wallet users in these countries will be able to use Algorand USDC (USDCa) to make everyday purchases in fiat currency, everywhere Mastercard is accepted.
To start making payments with their USDCa, users can sign up for a debit card via Pera Wallet. After topping up their wallet address with Algorand USDC, they will be able to spend their funds through seamless crypto to fiat conversion. Users can withdraw their funds back to their wallet at any time; otherwise, at time of sale, funds will leave their wallet and be converted to fiat.
Algorand’s speed, low fees, and instant finality make it possible for payments to operate in a fully decentralized and transparent way. When payment services providers utilize Algorand-based assets, settlement happens instantaneously, balances are tracked on-chain, and users can make payments, top-up, or withdraw without intervention.
For that reason, digital currencies issued on the Algorand blockchain, like Circle’s USDC, are well-equipped to support modern payments networks due to their secure design, speed of transaction, and efficiency of settlement. As a result, Pera wallet users will enjoy non-custodial, permissionless, and low-cost payments when they use Algorand-based currencies.
Jerome Faury, CEO at Immersve, said, “We chose Algorand to be the first non-EVM chain supported by Immersve due to Algorand’s instant finality, low fees, and robustness. The Algorand and Immersve teams have since worked closely together to get the Immersve protocols running on Algorand. Now dApps operating on Algorand can embed a web3 Mastercard® into their product, enabling users to transact in a fully decentralized way at over 150 million merchant locations globally.”
“Payment services providers choose Algorand because it empowers them to launch the features their customers want, like the ability to spend their digital assets anywhere, anytime, as easily and securely as they would use their fiat currencies in a point-of-sale transaction,” said Staci Warden, CEO of the Algorand Foundation. “We’re in a new era of payments, and companies like Immersve, Mastercard, and Pera are leading the way.”
More about the Pera Card
The Pera Card is non-custodial. Customers always remain in control of their Pera wallet address. Their card will have a unique wallet address that they can send funds to or withdraw from at any time. Customers will be able to withdraw their USDC back to their Pera wallet at any time without needing approval or intervention from the card issuer. This is uniquely possible with Algorand's native assets and instant finality.
The Pera Card will have balances and transactions available on-chain. Customers will be able to see their balances and transactions on the Algorand blockchain, as well as in their account history. Many other cryptocurrency card implementations track balances off-chain due to the limitations of the underlying blockchain, and cannot issue every transaction on-chain due to high costs. Algorand makes it possible for all transactions to be issued and viewed on-chain, offering the highest transparency.
The Pera Card can settle payments immediately. Payments will be settled on the blockchain instantly, thanks to the Algorand blockchain’s instant finality.
More about the protocol integration can be found in Immersve’s documentation here.
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About Algorand
Algorand (ALGO) is an energy-efficient, quantum-secure, single-layer blockchain with instant finality, consistently high throughput, and low fees. It is designed and built for real-world scale and has grown into a vibrant ecosystem of developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprise partners that benefit from institutional-grade certainty and resilience. Its fees, instant finality, and a minimal carbon footprint appeal to the protocol's millions of retail users, and developers of all kinds appreciate the ability to use common programming languages like Python. Builders on Algorand are creating protocols and companies that solve important problems at a global scale: instant payments in war and disaster zones, self-sovereign identity for the disenfranchised, supply-chain traceability for global commerce, permissionless protocols addressing financial inclusion, and the creation of entirely new markets through tokenization, to name a few. To learn more and start your journey on Algorand, visit algorand.co
Contact: press@algorand.foundation
About Immersve
Immersve is a principle member of the Mastercard network. Its issuing as a service platform supports both centralised and decentralized payment experiences. Exchanges and dApps (e.g. web3 wallets and DeFi protocols) can easily integrate with Immersve’s APIs and smart contracts to transact everywhere Mastercard is accepted. Immersve is a registered Financial Services Provider. For more information on the APIs, go to docs.immersve.com.
About Pera Wallet
Pera Wallet is the easiest and safest way to store, buy, and swap on the Algorand blockchain. Pera Wallet is a self-custodial wallet, giving you complete control of your crypto. With Pera Wallet, you can buy crypto with a credit card, manage your entire DeFi & NFT portfolio across every Algorand wallet you own, swap Algorand assets easily, and more. Learn more at perawallet.app.