United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), the United States’ second-biggest mortgage provider and the #1 wholesale lender for six years in a row, just announced that it would stop accepting cryptocurrency as a means of payment, just six weeks after launching a pilot program to begin accepting them as a means of payment.
The announcement started off by announcing that they facilitated the first-ever cryptocurrency mortgage payment successfully. It stated, “United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), the #1 wholesale and purchase lender in America, announced it has successfully evaluated and accepted the first-ever cryptocurrency mortgage payment in September and five more cryptocurrency mortgage payments in October from borrowers.”
It further stated, “These transactions are not only the first of their kind for UWM but also the entire mortgage industry. UWM used these payments as model to better assess scaling cryptocurrency payments for consumers.”
Though they praised the move, the President and CEO of UWM, Mat Ishbia stated that the company is not going to extend beyond a pilot at this time, citing incremental cost issues and regulatory concerns.
He stated, “We’re proud to be the first mortgage lender to successfully pilot this technology and further demonstrate that we’re innovating for the long term. As we said last quarter, we were going to look into accepting cryptocurrency and test it to see if it’s a faster, easier and cheaper solution and thanks to our innovative technology team members, the transactions were successful. Due to the current combination of incremental costs and regulatory uncertainty in the Crypto space we’ve concluded we aren’t going to extend beyond a pilot at this time.”
Conclusion
The announcement also explained that the test-and-learn process has helped the company be the first to make cryptocurrency transactions possible and has prepared the company to make it available once cryptocurrency transactions become something that will propel the organization forward.
The announcement also stated that UWM will further monitor cryptocurrency, the use of blockchain technology, and opportunities for future use.
UWM Holdings is trading at $6.81, up 1.79% at the close of market yesterday. It is up 0.44% in pre-market skirmish.