You know that feeling when you sit down at your favorite bar and the bartender starts pouring your favorite drink without you needing to say a word? By listening to patrons over repeated visits coupled with an innate sense of knowing just what they need as soon as they need it, a great bar keep doesn’t have to ask - they just pour and deliver. 

In similar fashion, Spritz is able to serve our bill pay patrons with the crypto payment features they deserve and expect. This means integrating with the Web3 and DeFi tools you already use daily, and making our bill pay experience blazingly fast, user-friendly and cost-effective.

Today, we announce Direct Wallet Pay for our early access users, making it even easier to instantly pay real-world bills in USDC directly from their favorite crypto wallets.

A new era in web3 bill pay is here

According to Decrypt, there are now more than 30 million active users of crypto wallet Metamask, which realized nearly 50% growth over the first half of 2022. That’s a lot of new people beginning to participate in NFTs, DAOs and innovative DeFi protocols.

With the explosive growth of crypto self-custodial wallets like Metamask, which are now supporting more layer-2 networks, such as Polygon, Spritz is able to process IRL bill payments even faster and more cost-effectively made with the world's most popular digital assets, including stablecoins supported on the Polygon network.

One such stablecoin is Circle’s USDC, a top 5 digital asset by market cap. With over 50 billion USDC in circulation (as of May 30, 2022), USDC has become a backbone of crypto capital markets, where “blockchain-based ‘smart contracts’ eliminate the need for traditional intermediaries and automatically match buyers, sellers, borrowers and lenders, opening financial access to more people”. 

Our latest product release helps us bridge TradFi to DeFi in the most straightforward way possible, by leveraging the world’s top crypto wallets and stablecoins together. This brings us one step closer to our vision of connecting every smart contract and crypto wallet to real-world utility, and bringing web3 personal finance to more people with less complexity. 

By integrating with popular wallets like Metamask for those holding, farming or swapping USDC on Polygon, Spritz can make near-instant payouts to thousands of US bill pay providers seamlessly, including banks, mortgage providers, and other TradFi institutions. 

The best part is that we can also integrate directly with several different crypto wallets, including Coinbase Wallet and TrustWallet. For the purpose of the demonstration below, we’ll use Metamask as our chosen connected wallet.

How Direct Wallet Pay Works

With Direct Wallet Pay, Spritz users invited to our private beta (starting in the US) can quickly sign-up, complete KYC, connect their crypto wallet, and link bills to make their first payment using USDC. 

The entire process takes less time than sipping a pint on a patio, unless of course you’re racing to finish that last beer before Happy Hour ends. 🍺

Step 1 - Connect your wallet

We’ll keep this step short and sweet.

‍Step 2 - Link your bills

After signing up to the Spritz app and completing the KYC, you’re ready to link some bills. Simply click on “Bills” from the left menu, or “Link your first bill” from our Getting Started module. 

You can then securely log into and link the credit card, mortgage, and other bill pay accounts you'd like to pay with crypto. For more on connecting to your bill pay accounts, check out our Help Center article.

‍Step 3 - Select a bill to pay

Let’s return to the Bills screen from the left side menu. Here you’ll see all the bills you have linked through Spritz with additional details, such as any owing amount due, your last statement balance and due date for the next payment.

Step 4 - Click on "Pay from Wallet"

You’ll see two options to pay your bills. One of which includes Direct Wallet Pay, which will take you to - you guessed it - our direct wallet pay screen to set up your bill payment using USDC instantly. 

With Direct Wallet Pay, as long as your connected wallet holds USDC on Polygon, you’ll be able to easily pay your bills in a matter of seconds.

Step 5 - Schedule your payment

Choose the amount in USDC to put towards the payment, click "Confirm Payment," and voila, your bill pay will automatically be scheduled.

Benefits of Direct Wallet Pay

Direct Wallet Pay using Spritz has several advantages. Here are a few to share with your friends over those patio pints:

Keep full control

Pay bills your way with your wallet, your keys, and your crypto. Keep full control of your funds and linked bills. Easily connect to the crypto wallet you use daily for all your web3 needs. 

We protect your data and execute the payment on your behalf without your TradFi accounts accessing your crypto wallet.  

‍Save time and money

Program your payments in less time. With Direct Wallet Pay, there’s no need to transfer your USDC to a new Spritz wallet address. This means less steps and fewer transactions!

Even better, our early users will incur zero fees for any bill payments made through Spritz. We will continue to cover any gas fees from Polygon as we initiate the bill pay, while our customers enjoy zero transaction fees.

‍Pay in USDC

USDC is not only one of today’s most popular stablecoins, but one of today’s top digital assets for a reason. By using Direct Wallet Pay, our customers are able to leverage their extensive USDC holdings to their fullest potential, and pay bills with a trusted stablecoin, rather than converting to fiat and offramping to a bank.

With many opportunities to yield farm using USDC, especially through Polygon DeFi apps, and earn interest in USDC, there’s countless ways to grow your stablecoin yields and pay bills simultaneously. 

‍Keep it simple

Above all, we value simplicity here at Spritz (except of course when mixing fancy cocktails). 

Like a walk through your neighborhood park, paying bills with crypto shouldn’t feel daunting or confusing. 

With Direct Wallet Pay, we’ve made it as simple as possible - many would even say enjoyable - to connect real-world bills to any crypto wallet and program payments with on-chain assets  anywhere, anytime.

Using Metamask on Polygon and Adding USDC

For those using Metamask who have not yet bridged assets to Polygon, our team has uncovered several useful resources to guide you through the process. 

‍Getting started with Metamask on Polygon (Polygon blog)

‍Setting up Metamask for Polygon (Stakingbits on Medium)

‍Connect Metamask to Polygon (CoinMarketCap)

We also came across these helpful guides for adding USDC to your Metamask wallet, as well as for getting USDC on Polygon.

Other ways to pay bills on Spritz

In a previous blog, we covered how to fund your Spritz account to make payments with a wide range of digital assets held on Polygon. This includes making deposits to your Spritz Vault by transferring any asset on Polygon directly through your connected crypto wallet on Spritz, or by sending crypto from an external wallet, including those on an exchange, to your Spritz Vault address. 

The great thing is that these alternative sources of funding are still intact. In fact, the Spritz Vault remains a viable option for paying your bills with other assets aside from USDC. It also supports bill pay funding from other DeFi protocols on Polygon, including deposits made through Aave, SushiSwap, and Quickswap.

Here’s everything you need to know about funding your Spritz account to make payments in non-USDC funds through the wallet of your choosing.

What’s next

We’ve come a long way in just a few short months, with Direct Wallet Pay being a major milestone achieved by our team for our growing community. 

As we begin to expand our customer base and welcome more early users paying their mortgages, credit cards, student loans and more with USDC, here are a few more exciting initiatives we’re working on to further build off of our Direct Wallet Pay launch.

• Support for more stablecoins and digital assets. 

• Support for more networks, such as Solana, Ethereum, and Avalanche, which also means more integrated wallets like Phantom. 

• More bill type integrations, from rent payment platforms to regional utility providers.  

For now, Spritz’s Private Beta is open to US residents. Here’s the link to our private beta request form. Priority will be given to DeFi users on Polygon holding USDC in their wallets.

We want your feedback

Enjoying Spritz and paying those IRL bills with your crypto? Then share your experience with the Spritz community and send us some feedback. We’d love to learn what’s on your Spritz wishlist and more ways we can improve our platform. 

Our Discord community is open with several channels to share product feedback. For any early users not already in our private #beta-testing channel, please join our Discord and DM our Head of Community, @Hadley, to request access. 

‍Direct Wallet Pay makes it easy to pay IRL bills with USDC through Spritz simply by connecting your bill pay accounts to your crypto wallet. Direct Wallet Pay is distinct from the Spritz Vault, which is a multi-sig wallet on the Polygon network used for paying bills with other digital assets and DeFi protocols. Bridging assets to the Polygon network and/or transferring funds to the Spritz Vault from an external wallet may incur gas fees. If already holding USDC in a crypto wallet, we recommend paying your bills on Spritz through Direct Wallet Pay for the easiest and fastest experience possible.