London-based digital finance company Wirex has announced it is to team up with Stellar to release 26 fiat-backed stablecoins for its users and business clients.

The first stage of the collaboration sees the launch of Stellar’s native asset – Lumens (XLM) – to the Wirex platform, where it joins 19 other digital and traditional currencies that can be converted and spent using the Wirex Visa card.

The co-founder of the FCA regulated organisation – Pavel Mateev – described the partnership as a ‘thrilling opportunity’.

“Joining forces with Stellar makes perfect sense for us,” he said.

“Both companies share a greater goal – encouraging the mass adoption of digital currencies and transforming the way people make payments.

“We are thrilled to add XLM to the Wirex platform and even more excited to release our industry-first Wirex stablecoins.”

Openness

His views were echoed by Stellar’s Jed McCaleb who said the move would help pave the way for improved financial openness.

“Stablecoins have the potential to transform the payments space,” said the Stellar co-founder.

“We’re excited to be working with Wirex to launch its first stablecoins to help make money more fluid and open to everyone.”

Mr Mateev added: “Wirex stablecoins will bring speed and efficiency into any type of payment: every day purchases, cross-border transactions and machine-to-machine payments”.

“We’ve spent a long time looking for a platform which will be scalable, fast and compliant – we are happy we’ve chosen Stellar – it’s an excellent, secure platform and has a very strong team.”