British fintech and banking firm Revolut has introduced crypto staking — a practice of earning rewards for serving as a transaction validator in the Ethereum blockchain – to its UK and European Economic Area (EEA) customers.
The process enables users to earn dividends or interest on their Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot, and Tezo holdings just for depositing and holding the four tokens on the platform.
The London-based neobank posted on its website the service terms, including the payout, cadence and required minimum time to stake, noting that it will provide up to 11.65% annual percentage yield (APY). Ether rewards are currently locked, the company details, but yields will be distributed to retroactively once the Ethereum protocol has been updated.
Notably, staking positions can be exited at any time as there is no minimum withdrawal period. Yield rates, however, are subject to change and are largely dependent on fluctuations in the total amount of tokens locked up through staking on each given network.
Emil Urmanshin, crypto general manager at Revolut, says: “We want to enable users to do more with their crypto – with withdrawals and deposits, as well as earning interest on their crypto through Staking. Staking is the first milestone on our 2023 roadmap and we’re really excited to help users put their crypto to work and earn returns on their balances at Revolut.”
The staking process involves the users delegating their token holdings to those running the blockchain software in exchange for sharing some profit. The decision was taken in the context of huge interest from retail investors who were open to the idea of earning interest on their crypto assets.
Revolut has recently expanded its digital asset offering with the addition of 12 extra tokens as it seeks to build market share against crypto-native platforms.
Alongside the launch, the challenger bank has added a new currency to its ‘Learn & Earn’ courses, which launched in July and hit one million users just one month later.
Crypto Learn & Earn is a program offered by Revolut which allows eligible customers to learn about supported crypto assets by completing short lessons, and earn crypto rewards. The in-app courses have been created to help customers improve their knowledge of cryptocurrencies and related topics, including blockchains, and the most popular tokens and protocols.
The expansion of its crypto offering comes hot on the heels of introducing a new ‘spend from crypto’ feature, which converts users’ crypto balance into fiat money that can be spent to pay for everyday purchases.
