With the recent launch of the Outlet Finance Debit Card, and Outlet’s big transition from Ethereum to Terra, we reached out to learn more about what they’re up to.
It seems like now more than ever, Outlet is achieving their initial vision. The first check into Outlet was from Consensys, and the pitch to them was to get people on to direct deposit with DeFi to unbank them.
Think of the Outlet app as a bridge between CeFi (your bank) and DeFi (the Terra blockchain). On the CeFi side of the app, Outlet connects to your bank where you can deposit/withdraw USD into your Outlet account. However, Outlet never touches your money and is not a bank, they work with an FDIC Insured and regulated bank partner.
On the DeFi side the new version of Outlet (set to launch late March or early April 2022) is embedding the Terra Station wallet directly in the app. You’ll be able to import your Terra seed or create a new one.
Once you have USD, you can move it to UST on the Terra blockchain and drop it in Anchor or communicate with any Terra dApp you’d like.
No more waiting 3-5 business days to get your crypto. Now you can flip between USD and UST at the speed of a Terra block (~2 seconds).
You can flip between USD and UST 1:1 and Outlet is covering any de-peg risk. So if you top up your debit card with 100 UST you can rest assured it will equate to 100 USD.
Outlet is working with a team called Phase DAO to insure the default Anchor Protocol vault used through Outlet. You can still deposit directly to Anchor Protocol if you prefer, but if you run through Outlet’s Anchor Protocol vault managed by Phase DAO, you still get the full Anchor rewards except it’s also fully insured.
The debit card integration will allow users to easily spend balance topped up to the Outlet Spending account. The debit card is totally free to use, however Outlet makes money via interchange fees every time a user swipes the card.
Eventually, Outlet would like to enable borrowing against crypto balances to allow the card to be used more like a credit card as well.
Outlet also sees a future where buying crypto through the app becomes a core piece of their business, but flipping to stable coins and moving them around should always remain free.
Apparently the vast majority of the way apps like Venmo and Cash App make money is by providing instant bank deposits for a 1% fee, something Outlet may adopt in the future as well.
Outlet will definitely be rolling out a rewards system for debit card users eventually. Being on MasterCard, this is pretty easy to do via their API, but the focus for now is on building a stable bridge between CeFi and the Terra ecosystem and launching globally.
Outlet uses the same on/off ramp provider as Kado and doesn’t see them as a competitor since Outlet is more focused on acting as a Neo Bank for consumers.
Pat is personally a big lunatic. He’s excited currently about Vertex and Sigma protocol which are bringing institutional trading and FX trading on chain, as well as keeping an eye out for projects bringing protocol owned liquidity to Terra, a theme he sees missing from the Terra ecosystem at the moment.
Pat sees the transition to Terra as not only a big moment for the company, but a life changing opportunity for the roughly 40k users of Outlet Finance. Even the 8% offered today is up there as one of the highest savings rates in CeFi, and the launch of Anchor’s +19% APY will make them the highest in the industry while also giving them amazing utility.
To get started with Outlet, visit Outlet.finance to create an account and download the app.