MILAN (Reuters) – Mesh, a U.S. fintech whose investors include PayPal Ventures, will provide customers of Italian digital asset wallet Conio access to several leading crypto exchanges, such as Binance or Coinbase, the two companies said on Monday.
The partnership will allow Conio’s 430,000 Italian customers to access 10 leading crypto currency trading platforms through the Conio App, the companies said. Customers will be able to instantly transfer any bitcoin they buy on the exchanges into their Conio wallet, rather than having to scan a QR code or go through other measures as at present.
Conio is backed by Italian postal service Poste Italiane and asset manager Banca Generali.
By using open banking technology which allows the sharing of financial data, a single Mesh account can authenticate users into more than 300 centralized crypto exchanges and self-custody wallets.
Conio currently only provides custody services for digital assets such as bitcoin.
“With our partnership with Conio, we are deploying the infrastructure to make safe and seamless aggregation and crypto transfers possible for hundreds of thousands of users in the region,” Mesh founder Bam Azizi said.
Conio said a study by crypto industry association Adan and consultancy KPMG showed that two thirds of Italians who have purchased cryptocurrencies store their bitcoin on the exchanges they used to buy them, rather than having personal wallets.
The Italian figure is similar to 63% in France’s or 69% in Britain, Conio said, adding it was necessary to increase awareness regarding digital asset safety.
Conio has developed a system that would keep users’ crypto assets safe even if the company itself ceased to exist, Conio General Manager Orlando Merone told Reuters.
The collapse of leading crypto exchange FTX in 2022 inflicted billions of dollars of losses on its customers.
PayPal Ventures is PayPal’s global corporate venture arm and invests in promising start-ups in fields that are of interest for the U.S. payments company.
(Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Susan Fenton)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.