Cashila, the European bitcoin/fiat payment processor adds a new feature for its customers enabling them to top up their account with Sofort Banking option. That allows users to instantly buy bitcoin or send a SEPA payment.

Sofort Banking is a popular online banking based payment method, especially in Germany and Austria. Over 30 000 e-commerce shops process about three million transactions per month using this service. It is currently available in 13 EU countries. “We are proud of the integration giving our customers the ability to easily top up their accounts using their familiar online banking solution, buy bitcoins and send or spend them on just about anything they want,” explains Cashila co-founder Jani Valjavec. The only fee customer pays is 1% on incoming transactions.

Tim Mitja Zagar, CEO of the company explains:

“Making transactions effortless is an essential step for the growth of the bitcoin economy. With this integration one can now buy bitcoins in real time. It gives our users the ability to easily and instantly top up their account. Once they do it, they can buy bitcoin right then and there.”

Cashila, which has transferred more than 1.4 mil. eur up to date, is a fully licensed euro and bitcoin payment processor. It operates as a euro wallet which lets user send and receive money, keep funds or convert to bitcoin. It was founded in Slovenia in 2014 with a seed investment of 110 000 eur.

Cashila CEO Tim Mitja Zagar and Cashila co-founder Jani Valjavec

Cashila CEO Tim Mitja Zagar and Cashila co-founder Jani Valjavec

Mycelium wallet integration

The company, striving for its customers' satisfaction, integrated the Mycelium wallet last year to make SEPA payments even more comfortable. After pairing their mobile device one can log-in directly from the app and also add new or import existing contacts from Cashila account. As a bonus reward for doing so company has started a campaign a few days ago offering no fee on the first 1000 eur transferred.

The service integrated Mycelium wallet last summer and it has appeared as it would be not exactly a fresh piece of information. "The new news is closer integration with Cashila. You can now register with Cashila right from the wallet, without needing to go to the website," Dmitry "Rassa" Murashchik, community manager at Mycelium explains for Cointelegraph.

Matej Zrimšek, head of communication at Cashila told Cointelegraph:

"We've been working closely with the team of Mycelium since last summer. We had an implementation that enabled the pairing of the two services via the API, but not a lot of users were using it or were aware of it. This changed with the latest update (v. 2.6.0), where users can register straight from their Mycelium Wallet interface and add or import their contacts."

According to him the whole process is now more intuitive and simpler for end users, since no extra pairing is needed. "A lot of new users are already trying the service. To boost the adoption of both Mycelium Wallet and Cashila, we are gifting each user a 1,000 eur of fee-free transfers."

He adds they are developing the service towards a full-fledged solution for the end user, removing the boundaries between bitcoin and traditional banking. However, the new SEPA payment feature is supported only on android mobile wallets for now.

Not only for bitcoiners?

Payment processing services like Cashila or Bitwala (which has started to provide a debit card for its customers lately) have been focused mainly on remittances, freelancers and bitcoin enthusiasts who do not want to use expensive and slow banking service. For example when receiving money by wire transfer from outside of Europe, 3-5% or even 10% fees usually cut of the amount transferred while it takes at least two days to complete. Using bitcoin services with 1% fee is much cheaper and take less time. Though it's still not so cheap and fast as using bitcoin only.

Another use-case of these bitcoin/fiat bridges is so called bitcoinifizing. All bitcoiners living on digital currency have to deal with still low merchant acceptance while needing to pay for expenses in fiat. With these services one can completely avoid banks while "banking" faster and cheaper.

It will be interesting to watch the next direction of the payment processors as now it looks they want to reach out to a wider customer base, not just cryptocurrency enthusiasts.