Ethena introduces payments application for USDe with 6% reward incentives
A new self-custodial application enables USDe usage for daily transactions, savings accounts and international money transfers, featuring annualized rewards reaching 6%.
A new global money application centered on Ethena's USDe synthetic dollar has been introduced, bringing the crypto-native asset into the realm of daily transactions, savings functionality and international money transfers.
Based on the announcement released Tuesday, the self-custodial application known as Ethena Pay provides users with the capability to maintain USDe balances denominated in dollars, generate up to 6% in annualized reward yields and utilize their funds via a payment card, all while offering fiat onramp support.
The beta release encompasses 48 nations spanning Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and additional regions, although the initial launch is restricted to 400 participants, with availability scheduled to broaden on a weekly basis, Ethena stated in a Tuesday post on X. The Avalanche network will function as the sole settlement infrastructure for transactions and money transfers.
Participants have the option to deposit either fiat currency or cryptocurrency, with deposited assets being converted to USDe (USDe). The application facilitates the use of IBAN credentials to transfer funds between external banking accounts and local currencies. The backend technology infrastructure is supplied by Iron, which is owned by MoonPay.
Ethena Pay will not be accessible in the US, EU, Canada, Taiwan or South Korea during the initial phase, although Ethena anticipates expansion into these markets throughout the beta period, pending regulatory clearance.
Ethena's USDe grows as ENA rallies
Ethena represents an Ethereum-based protocol responsible for USDe, a synthetic dollar engineered to preserve its value in proximity to $1 while operating independently of conventional banking infrastructure.
USDe employs cryptocurrency collateral in conjunction with hedging methodologies, which include derivatives positions, to assist in maintaining its price peg. The asset has expanded to achieve a market capitalization of approximately $4.1 billion, positioning it as the sixth-largest stablecoin, based on data from DefiLlama.
Ethena additionally manages ENA, the governance token associated with the protocol, which currently holds a market capitalization of approximately $1.5 billion. The token has experienced a significant surge throughout the past month, climbing roughly 68%, although it continues to trade substantially beneath its historic peak values.
Last Friday, the Ethena Foundation put forward a proposal to allocate 95% of the net revenue it collects from Ethena's primary business operations toward ENA token buybacks after USDe's circulating supply achieves $7.5 billion. ENA increased by more than 10% in the wake of the proposal and posted a 27% gain across the week.
The token registered approximately $595 million in trading volume during the past 24 hours, representing a 16% increase compared to the prior day, and was changing hands at around $0.16 on Tuesday, based on data from CoinGecko.