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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Publicly traded NCR Corp. is opening up its wide array of banking and credit union clients to bitcoin services.© 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP650 U.S. banks will soon be able to offer bitcoin purchases to an estimated 24 million total customers. As part of the deal between enterprise payments giant NCR and digital-asset management firm NYDIG, community banks, including North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank, and credit unions, including Bay Federal Credit Union in California, will be able to offer their clients cryptocurrency trading through mobile applications built by the payments provider. Instead of having to deal with the burdensome regulatory requirements related to actually holding the cryptocurrency for their customers, the financial institutions that opt to make the service available will rely on Nydig’s custody services.The effort is the latest by Atlanta-based NCR to capitalize on demand it’s seeing from banks and credit unions tired of seeing cryptopurchases made from their accounts to outside exchanges. By providing these clients a way to buy bitcoin—and eventually spend it—within their existing accounts, the traditional financial institutions are part of a rising tide of those companies in direct competition with cryptocurrency exchanges.“We're firm believers in the benefits of crypto and the strategic application,” says NCR president of digital banking Douglas Brown. “And that's true for our banking relationships, as evidenced by Nydig, and across retailers as well as restaurants and the like.”Founded in 1884 as National Cash Register, NCR employs 34,000 people and does business ranging from digital banking services to ATMs and restaurant point-of-sale kiosks in 160 countries. From January 2020 to March 2020 the company’s stock tanked 62% to $13.43. Then, riding a similar tide as PayPal and many other financial technology service providers since the Covid-19 pandemic, NCR’s stock has jumped 238% since March 2020, when quarantine started, and is now trading at $45.44. NCR generated $6.2 billion revenue from non-cryptocurrency transactions last year.In addition to its work with the financial sector, NCR is the largest provider of point-of-sale software to grocery and other retail stores globally, with a 45% market share, according to research firm RBR. In total, NCR serves 180,000 restaurants, retail chains and more, including Fifth Group Restaurants in Georgia and the Metropolitan at The 9 hotels in Ohio—all of which could eventually be opened to bitcoin payments if everything proceeds according to plan.In May, the 135-year-old organization partnered with New York-based cryptopayment firm Flexa to let customers of Altoona, Pennsylvania-based convenience chain Sheetz’s 600 stores pay for gas and other goods with bitcoin, ether, litecoin, dogecoin and more. Now, Brown says “dozens” of NCR’s banking and credit union clients have come to his company complaining that their customers were using their savings to buy bitcoin and other
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