Huobi confirms partnership with Solaris

The crypto exchange Huobi, has just confirmed its new partnership with Solaris. The purpose of the partnership is to provide a crypto-fiat debit card that will give Huobi users a way to spend their digital assets globally, including at point-of-sale.

Huobi x Solaris: the features of the debit card

The program has been approved and will be available to both new and existing users in the European Economic Area (EEA) as early as the second quarter of 2023. 

So starting in April, Huobi users will be able to spend their digital resources through the new debit card, in partnership with Solaris. 

The new card aims to reduce friction from the user experience. The new features will positively impact the timing of spending fiat currencies between accounts and cards. 

Huobi VISA cardholders who pay with the Huobi Token (HT) will be rewarded with cashback benefits based on their card levels. Solaris will provide full end-to-end processing and issuing capabilities for the program, including sponsorship by Visa BIN. 

Huobi’s offerings also include a number of loyalty-related benefits and are powered primarily by issuing and authorization technologies secondary to Solaris’ cards. 

Andrea Ramoino, Chief Strategy Officer of Solaris, said: 

“We are excited to partner with a market-leading virtual asset exchange to offer frictionless spending from crypto to fiat point-of-sale to the Huobi community through our market-leading Buffer technology. This is just the first step in our partnership as we look ahead to offer more payment options to users in the SEE region and beyond.”

What is Solaris?

Solaris is a Unix enterprise operating system. Solaris is known for its scalability. It can handle high workload and continue to run smoothly on databases, systems and applications. Solaris was developed by Sun Microsystems and has been owned by Oracle Corporation since its acquisition of Sun in early 2010. 

In reference to Solaris, it can be said to be one of the leading finance platforms in Europe. The tech company makes sure that companies in the world of finance, have a fast and innovative way to expose their financial services to their customers. 

Solaris is based in Berlin and employs more than 750 people in eight locations in Europe, India and Singapore. Combined net sales in 2021 exceeded €100 million, up more than 90% from the previous year. The Solaris story fully reflects Sun Microsystems’ philosophy of innovation and flexibility. This leads Solaris to stay ahead of the times. 

Huobi’s market share collapses

After the sad announcement of the layoff campaign that will result in 20% of Huobi employees leaving the platform, it was recently discovered that the exchange lost significant market share in 2022. 

The Huobi exchange platform apparently experienced an outflow of 100 million tokens in one week alone. According to data recently published by Kaiko, in 2022 Huobi’s market share dropped to 4%, explaining that its quarterly revenue has declined 98% since the second quarter of 2021. 

Kaiko’s research states:

“Looking at the USDD-USDT order books, which is the pair with the highest trading volumes, we can see that the market depth on the bid and ask side has been consistently unbalanced since the beginning of December.”

It will undergo a “structural adjustment” in 2023, which is expected to be completed by the first quarter of this year. The exchange platform seems to be in the midst of a crisis, let’s hope that the new partnership and the new year will get Huobi back on track.