Hashbank puts Bitcoin in the everyday

A card purchase of 100 Georgian lari is an unremarkable event. With Hashbank’s hashcard, an eligible purchase of that size produces something slightly odd: 0.50 lari worth of Bitcoin. The customer has bought whatever they came for. A small holding in a digital asset arrives alongside it. There is no separate decision to open a trading screen.

That small sequence explains the appeal of this Tbilisi-based bank better than a sweeping promise about the future of finance. Hashbank attaches an unfamiliar financial activity to a familiar one. The reward is called hashback. The customer can encounter crypto through ordinary spending, then decide whether to explore further. The product puts the first step inside a habit that already exists.

A reward attached to a habit

The conditions make the idea concrete. Purchases must reach 5 GEL, or the equivalent in another currency. Rewards accumulate up to 150 GEL equivalent a month. Cash withdrawals, transfers, gambling, utilities and top-ups are among the exclusions. Someone moving money between accounts should not expect the same result as someone buying groceries.

Here is the useful arithmetic: 1,000 GEL in qualifying purchases earns 5 GEL worth of Bitcoin at the time of crediting. Its later value can change. The percentage describes the reward calculation; it does not promise a return on the Bitcoin. That distinction matters when a spending perk starts to resemble an investment account.

The card itself is less exotic. Hashbank offers a digital Visa, a physical version with free delivery within Georgia, and Apple Pay and Google Pay support. Customers can freeze it in the app. Those familiar controls make the new reward easier to understand: the everyday payment experience supplies the context.

Beyond the reward, the app advertises access to 150 cryptocurrencies, buying, selling and swapping, plus automated purchases. That creates a progression from receiving a small amount of Bitcoin to deliberately managing digital assets. Customers can stop at the first step; the rest is available in the same place.

The licence came before the shortcut

The company was incorporated on August 17, 2022. Its founders are Volodymyr Nosov, Lasha Papashvili and Sulkhan Papashvili. The National Bank of Georgia granted its banking licence on November 3, 2023. Permission to conduct specified banking activities in a real environment followed on September 20, 2024, subject to the regulator’s written conditions.

That sequence matters. A digital bank can promise fewer steps for the customer while spending years completing its own. The regulator’s framework introduced permissions gradually. Treating the licence date as the day a complete bank sprang into existence would miss much of the work.

By August 2026, Hashbank said it had attracted more than 40,000 fully verified customers within five months of launch. The same announcement reported a Global Banking & Finance Review award. The customer number records an early response to the offer. It does not establish how frequently those people transact or whether the bank has reached profitability.

Its public values include simplicity, trust and teamwork. CEO Goga Chanadiri brings more than 20 years across banking and information technology, including an earlier role overseeing Hashbank’s IT and operations. The leadership background fits a business whose product decisions and operational decisions keep meeting.

The price behind the free card

Free delivery is a customer price. Building the institution is another calculation. At the end of 2024, Hashbank’s financial statements recorded 37.1 million GEL in paid-in capital, including 27.4 million contributed during that year. Annual administrative and other expenses were 6.4 million GEL. The year’s total comprehensive loss was 5.3 million GEL.

These figures measure different things: shareholder funding, expenses and loss. Together, they show how much financial weight sits behind an apparently lightweight interface. Capital pays for the institution’s capacity to operate; a free card does not make its people, software or obligations disappear.

The current product range also gives the bank conventional ways to earn. Digital personal loans run up to 80,000 GEL, with advertised effective rates starting at 16%, subject to individual terms. DUO savings, term deposits and locked deposits sit beside them. Business customers are offered multi-currency accounts, foreign exchange, deposits and lending. Crypto is one part of a broader banking proposition.

The plumbing gets a vote

In March 2026, Hashbank announced a strategic Visa partnership. Mastercard Move followed in April, alongside additional Swift capabilities. Swift’s reference data and payment pre-validation help check details before a transfer travels. For someone sending money abroad, reducing a typing error can matter more than adding another attractive screen.

The Mastercard launch also illustrates why pricing needs a date. Its zero-commission offer covered a three-month campaign and the first 2,000 successful transactions. A temporary waiver cannot sensibly be read as the permanent price of international banking.

Inside the bank, simplicity produced another challenge. Infrastructure partner HT Solutions describes a move from monolithic software to Kubernetes microservices. Independent development became easier, but communication between hundreds of services became harder to oversee. Working with Tigera, the team introduced network rules that denied communication unless explicitly permitted, plus visibility into traffic and staged testing before enforcement.

There is a practical lesson here for product builders: examine what a new security rule would interrupt before switching it on. According to HT Solutions, the result was clearer troubleshooting and more consistent application of security policies.

“Our main promise is simple: your crypto - with more freedom.”

Goga Chanadiri / CEO / September 2026

Who wants this particular combination?

September 2026 brought external crypto-wallet transfers. Customers could move supported assets into and out of the app, with free incoming transfers and network fees for withdrawals. Published asset and network minimums still apply. The connection makes the crypto balance more useful beyond the bank’s own interface.

For a Georgian customer juggling card payments, savings, international transfers and crypto, this combination can reduce the number of places to manage money. Someone satisfied with an existing bank and uninterested in digital assets has less reason to switch. The distinctive feature is the connection between those activities. Its value depends on whether the customer actually wants them connected.

The mobile emphasis also needs a little precision. Although its homepage promotes joining without a branch visit, Hashbank currently lists a Batumi branch. Remote access is central to the offer; physical presence has a place too.