This licensed off-shore bank is promising to bridge fiat and cryptocurrency by offering unified accounts and services

EQIBank, which defines itself as the world’s first licensed and regulated bank for fiat and digital assets, has launched promising to blur the boundary between the two classes of assets by allowing customers to operate a single account and manage these assets from that single account. This will be done within a regulated banking environment.   

The bank, which will serve individual customers, firms and institutions alike, is now taking customer applications ahead of the launching of accounts and it’s EQIBank Exchange in December 2018. The bank will operate globally and therefore offer a better link between national currencies (fiat) and cryptocurrencies, all with safety, security, lower cost, sand faster transaction speeds.

The bank hopes to eliminate the friction which has been on-going for some time now between legacy banking and cryptocurrency firms such as failure of the latter to secure banking services. This is in addition to solving the problem of multiple separate relationships with banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, lenders, custodians, wallet and vault providers by investors, which only adds in risk and is expensive.

Therefore, it will bridge the gap to make it much easier, faster and less expensive for investors to invest in new asset classes. For instance, customers will only need one banking relationship for their entire national currency, crypto and digital asset ecosystem to get these services.

Founded by former HSBC, Credit Suisse, Bank of New York and UBS bankers, EQIBank offshore bank is regulated by Financial Services Unit. It will offer trading, custody, lending, clearin, gand settlement for account holders including for cryptocurrency assets.  

With the bank, customers – individual and corporate – can open current and savings accounts where they can save fiat and cryptocurrencies. This is in addition to offering mobile banking, debit cards, checking and savings accounts. Of most important, the bank with offer seamless internal settlement between fiat and cryptocurrency for customers. The bank’s wallets will be insured and integrated with EQI's online banking infrastructure, offering transaction alerts, risk-screening and fraud protection.

To open an account, one will need membership subject to passing EQICheck, AML and KYC. This is in addition to having a minimum balance of 50,000 tokens into an EQIBank’s insured escrow account, which unlocks Platinum membership that enjoys all banking services. There is also bronze, gold, diamond and crypto membership. Gold, Silver and bronze accounts enjoy partial services as per this page.

Other features include an in-house cryptocurrency exchange that allows customers to interchange cryptocurrency and to facilitate its offer banking services to partner exchanges.

In addition to offering traditional loans, EQIBank will also offer P2P loans secured on cryptocurrency and digital assets to customers. This will be facilitated through a P2P loans platform. Customers will be able to send their collateral bank’s addresses and receive payment in fiat to their client’s fiat bank account with the bank.

It will also offer custody and vaulting service for crypto and digital assets. This will be a service targeted at institutional clients like hedge funds, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds which are required by law to store digital assets with a licensed custodian such as a bank. The custody service will be available for all major cryptocurrency and digital assets. There will be insurance for cryptocurrency and digital assets.

It will be joined by EQIBank Europe and EQIBank Asia, which are launching in 2019.