United Wholesale Mortgage Completes First-Ever Cryptocurrency Mortgage Payment Transactions

Lender makes history and demonstrates capacity for innovation

Pontiac, October 14, 2021 – 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.

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.

“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,” said Mat Ishbia, president and CEO of UWM. “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.”

This test-and-learn process has helped the company be the first to make this type of transaction happen and prepare UWM to make it available once cryptocurrency transactions become something that will propel the organization forward. UWM will continue to monitor cryptocurrency, the use of blockchain technology, and opportunities for future use.

"UWM has been a leader in technology for years because we never stop pushing the envelope and challenging the status quo on what makes the loan process faster, easier and cheaper for independent mortgage brokers and borrowers,” said Ishbia. “Our most recent roll-out of BOLT is a prime example of that, and will change the mortgage game in a significant way moving forward. Our team of nearly 1,200 technology experts will continue to build out elite, state-of-the-art tools that will help independent mortgage brokers win.”

Accepting cryptocurrency is one of many technology firsts by UWM over the years, which include BOLT, a self-service platform that provides the ability to get an initial approval for qualified borrowers in just 15 minutes, and Virtual E-Close, the industry’s first end-to-end online mortgage experience without wet signing any documents.