Portal x Velo: Digital dollar accounts with Portal self-custody wallets

What is Velo?

Velo, the new digital dollar account, offers people in Brazil and the US one of the fastest and cheapest ways to conduct cross-border payments. Held in self-custody wallets powered by Portal, users have full access to and control of their assets at all times. The accounts are backed by stablecoins, allowing users to store their money in digital USD with the ability to off-ramp funds at any time with instant settlement. Perfect for remote workers, travelers, immigrants, and anyone who receives payments in USD, Velo is the digital checking account of the future. 

Velo is built by Juno Finance, a pioneer in crypto banking in the United States. Juno Finance has amassed over 300,000 customers and processed over $1billion in annualized transaction volume.

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Velo’s Vision for digital dollar accounts

Velo is offering the fastest and cheapest way for Brazilians to save and transact in digital dollars, fully powered by stablecoins. 

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There is growing demand in Brazil for receiving, holding, and spending income in dollars within communities such as families of Brazilian immigrants to the US, tech entrepreneurs, expats, freelancers, and more. 

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Currently, cross-border payments using traditional financial rails often charge high fees and fail to settle for days. Opening a USD bank account in Brazil also requires a lot of paperwork or minimum deposits. The Velo team aimed to leverage their expertise in blockchain technology to remove barriers to owning a digital USD account and transferring USD across borders.

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“The Velo team brings a unique blend of expertise within blockchains and fintech to build one of the slickest UX that we've seen in the market. We're proud to be powering Velo as they continue to expand the easiest USD account product throughout LATAM.” - Portal CEO & Co-Founder, Raj Parekh

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The Challenge: Starting with the Wallet

As the Velo team envisioned a blockchain-first approach to providing retail digital USD accounts, they needed to solve for the digital wallet infrastructure layer.

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The Velo team sought a self-custody wallet solution that would allow users to receive/send and spend USD stablecoins, provide a seamless user onboarding process, and ensure the highest levels of self-custodial security - that is, security grounded in cryptographic principles whereby users and only users (instead of third parties like Velo themselves) can access funds in their digital wallet. 

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The wallet must also minimize user error and user burden when it comes to onboarding, such that wallet keys can be easily backed up and recovered if the user were to lose their device.

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Lastly, the Velo team also looked for a solution that was flexible and modular when it came to integration with other third parties, such as on- or off- ramps. This is because Velo wanted to tie self-custody wallets to bank routing numbers and provide their users with the ability to use blockchain rails and traditional fiat pathways at the same time. Velo users would thus be able to send money peer-to-peer instantly through the blockchain but also easily use the same account to send money through more traditional banking pathways. 

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The Solution: Partnering with Portal for self-custody wallet infrastructure 

"By leveraging the advanced self-custody wallet infrastructure from Portal, Velo is setting a new standard for digital dollar accounts. This partnership not only underscores our commitment to security and user autonomy—thanks to Portal's non-custodial TSS MPC cryptography—but also our dedication to creating a seamless user experience, minimizing onboarding burdens with sophisticated backup and recovery options. Whether you're a remote worker, traveler, expat, or someone who frequently deals in USD, Velo is your gateway to instant, effortless, and secure financial transactions." - Varun Deshpande, Co-founder & CEO of Juno

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The Velo team chose to partner with Portal for their infrastructure because:

• Truly Non-Custodial: Portal’s distributed key generation architecture through TSS MPC cryptography ensures that only the users are able to access their funds. Neither Portal nor Velo can access the funds in user’s wallets without the user’s consent.
  
  
• Onboarding that Minimizes User Burden: Portal’s TSS MPC wallet stack comes with sophisticated backup and recovery methods such as Passkeys and multi-backup feature that allows users to select more than one backup method. This ensures that user onboarding remains seamless while the wallet can never be lost. In the case of Velo, users can select familiar methods such as iCloud backup or PIN to backup key shares.
  
  
• Out-of-the-box Account Abstraction: Portal was the first in industry to provide an out-of-the-box Account Abstraction module that used MPC signers for smart contracts. This helped the Velo team ship Account Abstraction features such as sponsoring gas together with MPC signers to balance user experience, security, and cost.
  
  
• Easy Integration with Third Parties: Velo is also able to easily integrate simple and low-cost on/off ramps into the Portal wallet stack to enable Velo users to purchase USD stablecoins with Reais and vice versa.

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Democratizing wealth in Brazil

With the power of self-custody wallets from Portal, Velo is revolutionizing the way remote workers, travelers, expats, contractors, and many others can save, send, and spend their money.

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Download the Velo app today!