Stellar and Keybase team up for easier crypto transfers

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Nigel Frith
Nigel Frith
Former Global General Manager
Nigel was the Global General Manager at FXcompared. Nigel has a background in marketing for businesses and consumers as well working in a variety of online financial services roles. Read more
  • Highly anticipated partnership will help streamline cross-border cryptocurrency transfers
  • Security support from Keybase eliminates need to input lengthy, complex cryptographic addresses
  • Deal could help shape future of global payments

Digital currency platform Stellar has recently announced a partnership with Keybase that will help consumers make easier, faster cross-border payments.

Keybase is a free app that uses public-key cryptographic modules to provide security on PCs and smartphones. As the backend support provider on the project, Keybase will enable Stellar users to send international money transfers by simply inputting a username instead of long, complicated crypto wallet addresses.

With the move, Stellar hopes to build a cryptocurrency platform that lets consumers send or receive money anywhere on the planet in a more streamlined process.

Along with Ripple, Stellar is one of the currency market's most widely accepted cryptocurrencies. These disruptors offer large-scale operations in a faster, scalable framework that boasts near-instant transaction speeds.

The Stellar-Keybase partnership should allow even the most inexperienced blockchain users to initiate and complete cross-border payments in minutes. Customers will not only benefit from faster payments, but the move also makes blockchain and cryptocurrency more accessible to the general public. According to some analysts, this could help push Stellar over the edge as the world's leading crypto platform.

The deal could also open XLM to industries other than finance, thereby helping to diversify Stellar's portfolio offerings.

Neither Stellar nor Keybase have disclosed the financial details of the partnership as of yet, though Keybase officials have acknowledged their receipt of a "large undisclosed sum of money" from Stellar.

Keybase has already been working to develop the infrastructure it needs to facilitate faster, easier P2P money transfers using XLM for quite some time. Since its founding in 2014, the security app has made a name for itself, raising an admirable $10.8m in venture capital funding.

At first, the Stellar-Keybase platform will be used to record IOUs for a range of fiat money that can be moved between two or more parties. Eventually, users will be able to use the platform to send money transfers in a number of different international currencies for far less per transaction than traditional transfer channels charge.

According to a statement released by Stellar, the specifics of the deal are expected to roll out as they go live.

“Our agreement with Keybase entails many practical Stellar-centric deliverables. Rather than giving out a list now and spinning up yet another crypto hype-cycle, we'll announce products jointly with them as they're completed or near completion. We know the Keybase team very well and expect they will create critical Stellar ecosystem components over the coming years," said the Stellar blog post announcing the partnership.

For blockchain investors, this deal could further legitimize cryptocurrency and thus increase the price of XLM. From a fintech industry perspective, it represents another step toward digital payments and the changing landscape of the global transfer industry.


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