So let me preface again that none of this is financial advice and is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please be sure to do your own research and choose what investments are best for you. 

Outlet Finance

Outlet Finance just announced this past week that their release of their new Mastercard Debit cards are set to release this coming Sunday (March 6th). Up until now they've been teasing a lot of test runs of their card being used at different stores via twitter, but they've recently announced (again) that cards are going to start being available this Sunday, March 6th: 

Why is this such big news? American Banks' Interest Rates Suck. 

And they just flat out do. The big banks in the States are only offering maybe 1% and even that is considered pretty phenomenal. If you're looking anything outside of that, you're usually going into prepaid debit card territory. If that's your bag and you want to park money there, that's fine and all but prepaid cards are notorious for hidden charges and or have limited withdrawal structures. I remember being ecstatic about a prepaid debit card that earned you 5% APY on your first $5000, even though it would charge "monthly activity" fees. 

On the other hand, Outlet Finance will be able to offer 19.5% APY on your funds, via the Anchor Protocol. I've been waiting for a bigger intersection between DeFi and TradFi and this is a pretty big step closer to making that intersection possible. If you've read about my previous posts in regards to South Korea's Chai Card, it's been pretty well adopted, even for people who aren't part of the cryptographic sphere. With Outlet Finance's new debit card, I imagine that it's going to provide a pretty big stir for people wanting to maximize their savings, especially when many people have woken up to the fact that they're bleeding money due to 7% inflation. 

I truly believe that Outlet is paving the way for a lot of non-crypto native people to adopt crypto. This was also a beautiful thing about Korea's Chai Card--people with zero knowledge of crypto were using the card with zero knowledge that they were accessing the Terra ecosystem. I imagine that Outlet users will have a similar experience, and that many people will be simply attracted by the relatively massive interest rates. In other words, if you're a crypto native, 19.5% on stablecoins might just be on-par for crypto, but if you're non-native, 19.5% is going to blow people's minds when they were hoping for 1% on TradFi. 

OK, so I'm earning 19.5% APY on my money, there's got to be other fees or catches right?  

In a nutshell there are, but nothing that I found that unreasonable. They have their fee structure pretty well outlined, and there's only fees for ATM use and replacement card fees. More importantly, there's no fees for inactivity and there's no fee for actual usage, and there's ZERO fees for withdrawing and depositing funds. This is why I truly believe that this will be the difference between this and other prepaid debit cards, such as Crypto.com. A hallmark fee of many prepaid cards is that you can easily load money on there, but you usually get charged a hefty fee (or else it's flat out not possible) if you're trying to withdraw money out. 

And besides fees, keep in mind that they are associated with Patriot Bank, so just like any bank, you do in fact have to go through a verification process. This might go against the ethos of some crypto-natives, but if you're having your USD sit in a bank account anyway, it might has well be earning 19.5% APY right? 

The only other limitation/restriction that I could see is that much like the Korea's Chai Card, currently Outlet's debit card is only open for those in the US...at least for right now. People on discord and twitter have been constantly bombarding them with questions about when it's going to be available outside the US, so with that kind of pressure I'm guessing that it's only a matter of time that this grows ever outwards. 

Some Last things to Mention...

So if you've never heard of Outlet and you're thinking about trying it out, it is free to signup and if you do, please consider using my referral link so that we can both get 10 bucks. With the amount of LUNAtics that are trying to get their hands on this card, I imagine that these things will probably be backordered so it's probably best to open an account soon, as verification can take awhile. 

And secondly, Outlet may have been the first out of the gate on this one, but I can't write about the excitement of Outlet without mentioning alice, who are in the works of their own to create their own debit card, and to build a peer-to-peer Defi-based payment system similar to Venmo. If this article excited you, I highly recommend that you sign up to try to get on their mailing list for early access.