Expresscoin Expands Into Canada, Offers Debit Card Payments

Jul 1, 2014 at 12:48 UTCUpdated Jul 1, 2014 at 12:56 UTC. Digital currency retailer expresscoin has launched a Canadian branch of its business, in the first phase of its expansion beyond the US market.

Expresscoin, which is based in Santa Monica, California, offers customers the opportunity to buy bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin and blackcoin with debit cards, while importing wallet addresses from other services into their accounts.

Notably, the Canadian arm of the company will allow customers to purchase digital currencies using standard debit cards via DebitWay - a service which accepts all cards issued from the most popular banking networks.

Fast transaction times have meant expresscoin has had to up its game in terms of customer service, said Hsieh.

"Because it's near real-time," he explained, "We have to up our customer response times and be right there when customers need us or have any problems. [] If you were to make a wire transfer, the customer can tolerate a longer response time since the wire transfer still needs to clear, but with INTERAC, we expect and want to be there when problems happen."

As recently as 19th June, Canada amended existing laws to allow the regulation of "Virtual currencies", which likely includes bitcoin.

Noted wallet service Blockchain provides an overview of bitcoin and bitcoin-related services for new consumers on its sister site Bitcoin.com.

Significantly, expresscoin features on the site as a go-to company for the purchase of bitcoin.

Expresscoin's expansion into Canada follows its formal launch in early June.

For more on the company and its aims in the bitcoin industry, read our most recent report.