In day-to-day language ‘digital’ and ‘online’ are easily interchanged and mostly understood to mean the same thing. If an estate agent were looking to reach a wider audience than their local high street and were ‘going digital’ it’s generally understood that they would make a website and list properties on it – i.e they’d be moving their business onto the internet and ‘going online’. And if they were to market ‘digitally’ instead of ‘traditionally’, they would place advertisements on various places around the web.
However, in banking, or money, ‘digital’ means something slightly different. It refers to the latest processes or formats in which electronic technology is used to store, generate and process data – and the latest one that techies are using is blockchain. Blockchain is spearheading a third-wave of banking, which advances traditional (institutions that have handled our money for the last few hundred years) and online (the ‘challenger’ platforms to traditionals that only operate via an app and track your spending habits). Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve most likely heard about some type of digital assets – either cryptocurrencies or NFTs. This is the new type of money which digital banking platforms are using and banking on to eclipse their predecessors.
One such platform that’s making leaps in the space, is Canary Wharf based Scallop. Headed up by University of Oxford alum Raj Bagadi (Founder and CEO), Scallop has found a unique position in the market and is a growing on-chain banking-as-a-service provider. They are the first platform in the space where users can manage both their fiat and digital assets. Up until now, users would need to hold fiat in their bank and their digital assets in specialised wallets or exchanges. This is because banking platforms don’t generally have the facilities for crypto usage and crypto platforms don’t have the facilities for fiat transactions.
However, Scallop provides the best of both worlds. There are secure banking accounts for fiat and secure hardware wallets or software wallets for digital assets. These work in tandem and connect directly with each other to provide users seamless exchange between fiat and cryptocurrencies – which is a first for the whole sector and the main reason Scallop’s drawn much attention. Earlier this month Scallop was a platinum partner at Europe’s largest crypto event, Token 2049 London, alongside giants such as Huobi and chose the event to launch their Beta-product as well as announcing a partnership with leading hardware wallet manufacture, Ledger.
Scallop has a total of 10 banking and crypto products that they believe will deliver their mission to ‘provide the tools for further mainstream adoption and usage of digital assets’. These include: Scallop Accounts, Scallop Earn, Scallop Pay, Scallop Cards, Multi-Currency Wallet, Scallop transfer, Scallop Exchange, Scallop Hardware Wallet, NFT Marketplace, Scallop Chain.
Scallop has a timely solution for existing challenges in the digital-banking world. It will launch in November across Europe for a potential 747m users and will look to lead the third-wave of banking from the UK’s capital.