This is a common question and one that is easy to overcome! Many companies have a large U.S. user base that they service with crypto products, but they have a hard time establishing relationships with regulated U.S. financial companies (e.g. payment processors, banks, etc) for more traditional products, because they are domiciled offshore.
Luckily, Hydrogen has created a compliant way for international companies to offer Crypto Debit Cards to U.S. based users. Too understand our process, let's first examine the two pieces to our onboarding process:
Hydrogen Due Diligence
Hydrogen maintains a relationship with your company whether they are registered domestically or internationally. We will do our own due diligence on your corporate entity like we would any partner or vendor. This entity doesn't need to be the entity that is marketing the cards. If it's an international entity, we will not expose to you any FBO ledger account at the bank, and Hydrogen will settle up all USD<>Crypto ledger balances and fee payments with your company daily.
Sponsor Bank Due Diligence
When you run a Hydrogen card program, you act as a marketing and distribution partner of ours. We have already received approval from the bank sponsors for the underlying programs. Thus, we only need to pass on due diligence to our bank partners on the entity that will be marketing the cards. This needs to be a U.S. registered entity, with a U.S. based control person (e.g. Board Member, C-Level Executive).
Effective Strategies for International Companies
Here are some ways international companies can work with Hydrogen compliantly:
- Have a U.S. subsidiary of your company market your cards;
- Partner with an existing U.S. fintech to market your cards;
- Provide token grants to a U.S. entrepreneur in your community who creates an entity to market your cards;
- Have a U.S. based dev agency or consultant partner that is in your community market your cards;
For example, Ethereum's foundation is domiciled in Switzerland, but ConsenSyS (a technology company that creates Ethereum application) is domiciled in the United States. If Ethereum wants to launch a debit card for U.S. users that spends ETH at the point of sale, they can have ConsenSyS get approved by the bank sponsor and market the card program.