Ethena Debuts Crypto-Centric Neobank Ethena Pay

The new offering, which went live Tuesday (Sept. 1), includes card spending, dollar saving, international transfers and “Buy Now Pay Never where your savings rewards covers daily expenses,” as Ethena put it in its announcement.

“The roll-out will be phased with an initial early access list of 400 users which will be increased weekly within supported regions as the product moves out of beta over the course of this month,” the company said in a post on social media platform X.

Ethena Pay’s launch was flagged in a report by CoinDesk, which notes this move is part of ongoing expansion efforts by the company beyond its $4 billion synthetic dollar token USDe. Last week, the project upgraded the economics of the ENA token and introduced plans to use equity perpetuals as another way to generate returns for USDe, the report said.

And earlier in the year, Ethena launched a savings product with Coinbase, giving its dollar products exposure to an exchange with more than 100 million users, CoinDesk added.

With Ethena Pay, the report said, the company is connecting its savings products to payments, as users can hold savings, earn rewards and then spend or transfer money through one app instead of shifting funds between a crypto wallet, exchange and bank.