Crypto Rewards Programs Can Help Integrate Digital Assets

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The news: Assembled Financial, a subsidiary of Assembled Brands, has created Anda, a digital-only California bank that targets Hispanic consumers and promotes a cryptocurrency-centric rewards program.

How it works? According to CEO Michael Keeslar, Anda’s goal is to bridge the gap between “day-to-day banking and the cryptocurrency frontier, managed in a single app.”

When an Anda account holder makes a deposit, they are rewarded with Moves tokens. Staking their Moves tokens – that is, locking their coins to support the underlying blockchain network – allows users to double the number of tokens they receive in a year.

The Anda bank account is a deposit account provided through a partnership with South Dakota-based MetaBank.

What need does it meet? The Hispanic community is one of the fastest growing demographics in the United States, but college-educated Latinos are three times more likely to be underbanked than their white counterparts, according to the Federal Reserve. About 10% of Hispanic adults are unbanked and an additional 22% are underbanked. And there are only 29 Hispanic-owned or operated banks in the United States.

The challenges Hispanics face in the U.S. banking market include overdependence on nonbank financial institutions, especially for sending money overseas, and regulations with limited services in languages. other than English.

The trend towards hypersegmentation in financial services marketing has prompted companies to launch several offers tailored to Latinos and people of color.

For example, SoFi’s Galileo unit and LendingClub teamed up in May to launch Miami-based neobank Fortú, which targets underbanked Latinos. Other recent entrants specifically targeting underserved Latinos and people of color in their marketing include Bank Dora and Greenwood.

Why the crypto angle? Visa’s recent study on consumer attitudes towards crypto suggests that fintechs like Anda that provide an easy ramp to crypto are on the right track:

Consumers were much less interested in using crypto to purchase goods and services than in using cards linked to cryptocurrency, and they were more interested in earning rewards in cryptocurrency (57% overall). While whites in the United States make up more than half of cryptocurrency owners, non-white consumers are the most engaged with crypto. Non-white consumers represent an even larger percentage of the crypto-curious segment (47%), demonstrating a significant growth opportunity.

Many Latino consumers say that sending money to Latin America is an important financial service for them, and Latin America leads the way in cryptocurrency ownership: 30% of adults in the region own assets. digital.

In an interview with Insider Intelligence, the executive director of Puerto Rico-based startup accelerator Parallel18, Sebastián Vidal, cited the huge remittance market between Latin America and the United States as a ripe area for the disruption of cryptocurrencies. A recent study by PYMNTS also revealed an increased interest in the use of crypto for cross-border transactions.

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