Bitget Wallet Has Quietly Changed
Author: TechFlow
"When a colleague of ours was settling the bill at a restaurant in Da Nang, she started chatting with the server about crypto payments. The server said that Russians and Europeans frequently scan QR codes to pay using stablecoins. When asked if she knew Bitget Wallet, she replied that she was using it herself."
Even more surprisingly, this server had previously worked in affiliate business development for a Web3 payment company called Pay with Crypto. According to her, the company later suspended operations due to regulatory reasons, prompting her to take up the role of a restaurant cashier.
"It's a fascinating experience. You'd never guess they ended up as a cashier," Bitget Wallet COO Alvin Kan shared this story with TechFlow.
Rather than grand narratives surrounding crypto payments, the experience of this Da Nang restaurant server may illustrate ongoing shifts more effectively. Crypto doesn't always unfold within exchanges, industry conferences, or Web3 communities; it genuinely appears right at the checkout counter of an ordinary eatery.
Over the past two years, Bitget Wallet has sequentially expanded into businesses such as crypto cards, QR code payments, bank transfers, and tokenized stocks. Recently, a new bank receiving function went live, quietly revealing a different side of this wallet once distinguished primarily by on-chain trading.
From Wallets to Accounts
"For most people, opening a USD or EUR account is nearly impossible, typically requiring complex identity, address, and compliance verification," Alvin said when discussing the recently launched USD/EUR virtual accounts (Virtual Account).
"But USD income is no longer confined solely within U.S. borders. An increasing number of freelancers, remote workers, and cross-border enterprises need to receive USD payments from overseas clients."
This newly introduced feature diverges from the services offered by traditional crypto wallets. Through a partnership with stablecoin payment infrastructure company Noah, users can obtain bank transfer receiving details. USD accounts support ACH, Fedwire, and SWIFT, while EUR accounts support SEPA. Upon arrival, funds are automatically converted into stablecoins and deposited directly into users' self-custody wallets.
Payers do not need to hold crypto assets nor understand blockchain technology; they can still transfer funds through familiar banking channels, while payees directly receive USD stablecoins within Bitget Wallet.
Bitget Wallet is hardly the first product attempting to lower the threshold for cross-border receiving. Platforms like Wise and Payoneer have already established mature receiving services catering to such demands. Its distinction lies in connecting bank payments and collections directly to a stablecoin wallet: for users who prefer to hold or transfer income in stablecoins, this eliminates the intermediate step of moving funds between traditional receiving platforms and crypto wallets.
Cross-Border Finance Behind a Family Letter
"Recently, I watched *Love Letter to My Grandma*, which recounts how Chaoshan people used to make a living in Southeast Asia by sending family letters and money to relatives back home through a system known as 'Qiaopi' (family remittance letters)."
When talking about this film, Alvin reflected on the cross-border remittance needs that persist worldwide today.
"When we discuss cross-border remittances nowadays, we tend to focus heavily on fees and arrival speeds. But for many people, that money represents household living expenses or children's tuition—the very thing they most want to send home after enduring hard labor abroad."
A century has passed. While methods for earning a livelihood across borders continue to evolve, the fundamental need to send money to family remains unchanged.
A 2026 report released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) indicates that globally, approximately 220 million immigrants and overseas nationals provide financial support to 1.1 billion relatives. In 2025 alone, cross-border remittances flowing into low- and middle-income countries reached $728.6 billion.
Alvin noted that Argentine workers employed in New York must regularly remit funds to their families domestically. Salaries are disbursed in USD, but families need pesos for daily expenses, and may also wish to retain a portion of their savings in USD. A single income stream often must traverse multiple financial institutions and currency exchange channels before satisfying living requirements in both nations.
The internet has birthed new forms for cross-border livelihoods.
"Then there is another demographic that doesn't even need to work abroad," Alvin continued. "Consider a designer based in Buenos Aires who provides remote services to a U.S. tech firm and earns a monthly salary in USD. She has never lived in the United States, yet she must still navigate cross-border receiving, USD savings, and local spending challenges."
Data from global payroll platform Deel reveals that in Argentina, contractors receiving payments via the platform opt for USD over the local currency at a significantly higher rate, making Argentina the nation with the highest stablecoin receiving adoption on the platform.
For remote workers like this, the value of the Virtual Account becomes highly concrete: they do not need to request overseas clients to pay in cryptocurrency. Instead, they can accept compensation through familiar banking transfer channels, subsequently converting the funds into stablecoins to hold or transfer.
From the family remittance letters sent by overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, to the remittances of today's migrant workers abroad, and now the USD incomes of remote professionals, cross-border finance has consistently remained tightly woven into the livelihoods, families, and daily lives of ordinary people. These individuals, who may not yet be deeply familiar with Crypto, are gradually becoming the new user base Bitget Wallet aims to serve.
The Boundaries of Crypto, and Bitget Wallet's Ambition
The launch of Virtual Accounts has also brought a clearer trajectory to Bitget Wallet's product expansion over the past two years.
Virtual Account supplements bank receiving channels, Card and QR Pay link the wallet's crypto assets to real-world spending, and RWA products like Reality further expand investment landscapes for global assets. Bank receiving, daily payments, and asset investments are beginning to converge within a single wallet.
Viewed holistically, however, Bitget Wallet is becoming increasingly difficult to classify merely as a traditional "crypto wallet."
For a considerable period, competition among crypto wallets operated primarily on-chain: the number of supported public chains, the ability to deliver superior trading quotes, transaction speeds, and the capacity to capture the latest alpha constituted the core competitiveness of wallet products.
Bitget Wallet continues developing these foundational capabilities. Yet as its business expands into cross-border receiving, consumer payments, and global asset investments, its competitive landscape is shifting from rivals like MetaMask and Phantom to fintech entities such as Wise, Payoneer, and Revolut.
Interestingly, while Bitget Wallet endeavors to integrate bank receiving channels into a crypto wallet, traditional financial institutions are simultaneously exploring in the opposite direction.
In October, Western Union, an institution boasting over 170 years of history, announced a collaboration with stablecoin payment infrastructure company Noah, aiming to enable users to receive cross-border remittances via stablecoins. Conveniently, Noah also serves as the partnership backbone for Bitget Wallet's virtual accounts. An heritage remittance company embraces stablecoins, while a crypto wallet taps into traditional banking networks. Setting off from opposite ends, both converge at the same infrastructure provider.
Disclosures from Bitget Wallet in July this year revealed that its global user base has surpassed 100 million, with daily paying users exceeding daily trading users for the first time. For a wallet that has historically centered its use cases on on-chain trading, this signals a clear evolution: when users open the application, transacting crypto assets may no longer be the sole objective.
Nevertheless, transitioning from on-chain trading to mainstream finance requires far more than merely appending a few product features. Cross-border finance intersects banking architectures, payment networks, stablecoin issuers, and liquidity providers across sovereign jurisdictions. What a user desires might simply be a straightforward receipt or payment, yet fulfilling it demands seamless interoperability among multiple financial networks.
Bitget Wallet's proposed Onchain Payments Matrix is designed precisely to resolve this coordination challenge. The vision is to unify blockchains, stablecoin issuers, banks, payment processors, card schemes, and local merchant networks into a cohesive operating mesh, enabling capital to circulate fluidly across disparate financial ecosystems.
That said, integrating additional financial services does not imply that crypto wallets will displace banks. Account maintenance, clearing, fiat conversions, and local payment gateways remain contingent upon regional financial institutions and third-party partners. Regulatory compliance and geographical service coverage remain insurmountable practical constraints.
Equally crucial, as a wallet assumes responsibility for managing users' salaries, savings, and daily expenditures, the metrics of competition inherently shift. Traders may abandon a platform for tighter spreads or faster execution, but individuals relying on it to collect income and settle bills prioritize fund reliability, service uptime, and responsive issue resolution.
Bitget Wallet has already begun stepping beyond the conventional boundaries of crypto wallets. Yet, evolving from an on-chain asset management utility into a mainstream financial gateway will ultimately depend on cultivating a fundamentally different form of trust.