I paid rent...with my crypto debit card and paypal... but it wasn't easy!!!
Difficulty Level - Too hard...
Its our third post in the "I did what with crypto" series...
In our first post (click here)... we bought skittles from a physical store
In our second post (click here)... we went online shopping
and now.... we're going to pay rent to my landlord!
My Ingredients
A crypto wallet with crypto.com
A crypto debit card that accompanies the crypto wallet
Paypal, and a landlord that accepts paypal or debit/credit card payments
...and an ATM + Cashback Retailer
The rest of the story - How it works
I'm lucky to have a landlord that accepts credit/debit card payments via paypal so the end goal was to basically pay via paypal using my crypto card.
Load up my crypto.com account with my rent payment in USDC (USDC is a crypto that is designed to maintain a static price; meaning that 1 USDC always equals 1 US Dollar ALWAYS
In the crypto.com app I converted my deposited USDC rent payment US Dollars and topped up the crypto debit card via the crypto.com app
Add my crypto debit card as a payment method on my paypal account
The final step was meant to be sending my landlord a payment via paypal using my crypto debit card as the payment method... and this is where i ran into issues. However, my crypto card issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank does NOT allow you to make debit card payments to other individuals via paypal. So i needed a few more steps:
I needed to withdraw cash from an ATM using my crypto debit card
Then use the "Add Cash to Paypal" option which meant that i needed to
Download a QR code from paypal
Go to a local store, show them the QR code and provide them with the cash
Within 15 minutes paypal had deposited the cash into my account
Finally i sent the funds to my landlord
So what?
While our first two posts showed that you can make payments to any merchant that accepts credit/debit cards pretty easily, making payments to "individuals" is a bit harder.
How it needs to get better?
I mentioned this in previous posts but it's a little awkward that after buying crypto with dollars, i then reconvert my crypto into dollars myself before spending. I need options that convert the crypto to dollars behind the scenes or merchants that just accept crypto so it saves me a step.
The bigger issue here though was that it was too hard to pay an individual. (i.e. i had to withdraw cash, then go to retailer to deposit cash, all the while paying ATM and retailer fees). I don't know if this limitation is something specific to the issuer of my crypto debit card or not but its certainly too hard. I'll look to explore other options for going from crypto to cash when paying an individual.
Now you!!!
Leave me a message, or better... go do something... anything with crypto and tell us about it...maybe we will even post your story in this series!!
