United Wholesale Mortgage pilot accepts cryptocurrency for mortgages

United Wholesale Mortgage Holdings Corp. on Thursday said it made due on its expectation to accept cryptocurrencies for mortgages, but the payments will not extend beyond a pilot for now.

The Pontiac-based mortgage giant in September accepted its first cryptocurrency payment, which it says is the first transaction of its kind in the industry. It accepted another five payments through cryptocurrencies in October, but because of “incremental costs and regulatory uncertainty” of the digital currencies, the company won’t broadly accept Bitcoin, Dogecoin or Ethereum for now, CEO Mat Ishbia said in a statement.

“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,” Ishbia said. “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.”