Gate unveiled an all-in-one money app in Singapore, a day after OKX launched OKX Money. Both are chasing non-traders, and both meet the same rulebook.
Gate is betting that the account you open for crypto should end up holding everything else too. Its new app, Gate Money, lets users hold and convert cash, cryptocurrencies, stocks and gold in one place, then spend from those holdings with a card. Gate unveiled it in Singapore on October 7.
Founder and CEO Lin Han used the launch for a bigger claim than a product announcement usually carries. He told CoinDesk that all-in-one money apps will be one of the biggest consumer trends in the coming year, and that Gate wants to reach "a wider range of customers" than people who trade professionally.
The timing gives that prediction something to prove. OKX launched OKX Money, a standalone app for saving, sending and spending digital dollars, one day earlier.
Gate's own announcement says Gate Money covers holding, receiving, transferring, paying, exchanging and earning yield on assets. Users can hold multiple fiat currencies and digital assets with a consolidated view of balances, deposit and withdraw fiat, and move crypto on-chain. Eligible users can upgrade to a bank account in their own name.
The card is the retail part. Gate says Gate Card handles online and offline purchases in fiat or digital assets, with Apple Pay and Google Pay support, plus ATM withdrawals and local QR-code payments in some countries. Convert and Earn sit alongside it, and Gate says eligible balances such as USDT can earn up to 3.6% with no lock-up period. Users activate Gate Money by updating the Gate App to version 8.39.0.
One thing worth flagging about that page. It is published as an advertorial, and BeInCrypto states it has not independently verified the claims. Treat the product details as Gate's own description of what it is building.
Gate's regulatory footprint is also a company claim from the same page: a MiCA Crypto Asset Service Provider licence and a PSD2 Payment Institution licence in Malta, a full VASP operating licence from VARA in Dubai, registration with AUSTRAC in Australia, and coverage of 81 regulated jurisdictions.
Han's most ambitious promise is that users will be able to spend assets without first holding cash in the account.
"You can buy a cup of coffee with Nvidia stock," Han said. "You cannot do that with any app in the world right now."
Gate says it intends to let users convert between holdings at any time, including outside stock-market hours. What it has not explained is how those conversions would be priced or executed while the underlying market is closed. Neither source says whether Gate is cleared to offer the stock-spending feature in the places where it holds licences, which is the first question a regulator tends to ask.
OKX Money arrived on October 6 as a standalone app. In its own blog post, OKX says customers can fund accounts with more than 50 currencies, hold USDG, USDC or USDT and convert between supported stablecoins without conversion fees. Virtual and physical cards come with it.
The headline number is yield: up to 10% APY on eligible USDG balances with no staking or lockup, plus zero FX fees and no conversion markup on card purchases and up to 10% cashback for eligible customers. OKX says it operates under licensing frameworks in more than 30 jurisdictions.
The audience is the interesting part. OKX says roughly 70% of the people it wants to serve have never used a crypto application, and calls the app a first step that will expand only as the product performs. Reports put the initial rollout in parts of Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, and OKX has not named its specific launch markets. Its spokesperson said customers reach a higher tier through a 30-day average deposit threshold, a 30-day spending amount or a higher exchange VIP status, and declined to say how the yield is funded.
That gap matters because of the rules around it. The US GENIUS Act bans payment stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield, and EU MiCA rules prohibit issuers and crypto service providers from granting interest on single-currency stablecoins. OKX's most quoted number sits closest to that line.
Han said Gate sees Revolut, Cash App and Wise as more immediate competitors than traditional banks, while also watching other exchanges build similar products. He added that the biggest market for the service may be Asia, where people want access to US stocks but have restricted access to international brokerage accounts. That is a distribution argument before it is a product one.
Bybit is making the same pitch in Europe. CEO Ben Zhou put it plainly, in his interview about the exchange's licences:
"With these three licenses, we will become kind of like Revolut, plus what is currently offered by Bybit."
Bybit is Dubai-based, was founded in 2018, serves over 80 million users, and holds an electronic money institution licence from Austria's financial regulator, Zhou said. He expects a MiFID licence in about two months.
For scale, Gate is Cayman Islands-headquartered, with $2 billion in 24-hour trading volume and over 60 million users. Gate's own press page says over 61 million, a small gap between two pages published a day apart.
Coinbase has expanded into investing, derivatives and banking. Robinhood's UK offering already combines crypto with stocks, ISAs, options and futures. Binance announced its crypto super app push in July. Cross-border stablecoin flows rose 77.5% to $220.3 billion in the 12 months ending June 2026, according to Chainalysis, which is the demand all of these products are chasing.
What would separate a trend from a copycat wave is not the announcement. It is whether OKX names its launch markets and keeps its yield tiers inside the rules, whether Gate Money appears outside Singapore and explains how a closed-market conversion gets priced, and whether either company shows people coming back once the reward period ends. Deposits, spending and repeat use would say more than launch day ever can.
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