Huobi launches zero-fee mobile app targeting Asian market

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Digital asset exchange Huobi has launched a mobile app targeting the Southeast Asian market. The Singapore-based exchange says the region has been underserved by most global platforms and believes it has a high potential for growth. The app will offer its users a seamless platform to purchase digital currencies at zero fees.

Known as Huobi Lite, the app will be available for both iOS and Android users and will cater to the Asian and European markets, but not for the U.S. It will, however, focus on the Southeast Asian region, a Huobi spokesperson told Decrypt. The current crop of digital currency apps have largely ignored the region and focused on the more developed North American and European regions.

The spokesperson stated, “There aren’t many simple, user-friendly trading apps that cater to new crypto users. SEA is a mobile-first economy, so we saw an opportunity.”

Huobi Lite will not charge its users any fees for trading, deposits and withdrawals or crypto-to-crypto swaps, the company revealed. The exchange will also not act as a broker and will not make money from price differences. Instead, it will collect fees from brokers and market makers selling through the app.

The new app is Huobi’s response to Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) and Robinhood, both of whom offer the leading easy-to-use mobile apps for the digital currency industry. Huobi is betting on the zero-fee model to beat Coinbase, whose mobile app it has curiously emulated a lot in making its own. It will also focus on Southeast Asia, a region the two have ignored. Coinbase currently offers limited support in some countries in the region such as Indonesia and Singapore. It’s unavailable in other countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, the spokesperson told the outlet. Robinhood, on the other hand, has focused solely on developed markets in Europe and its home base of North America.

Huobi Lite will initially support Ether, EOS, Litecoin, XRP, BCH, BTC, Tether and its own native tokens, the Huobi Token and its Huobi USD stablecoin. It will support various fiat currencies including the U.S. dollar, the Chinese yuan, the Hong Kong dollar and more. Users will also be able to make purchases using their credit cards. Huobi will not perform any KYC on users who trade below $1,000 a day.