Visa on March 29th, 2021, announced cryptocurrency integration with its settlement platform. According to the company, a lot has changed since Dee Hock founded Visa, and nowadays Visa must “accommodate new form factors for money.”
Visa is piloting the new USD coin (USDC) capabilities with the cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com and then will offer USDC settlement capabilities to other customers in the future.
Visa, announcing yesterday, said: “The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs managing their business in a stablecoin or cryptocurrency, and it’s really an extension of what we do every day, securely facilitating payments in all different currencies all across the world.”
Furthermore, the payment giant emphasized that the ability to leverage USDC will help native crypto companies and Visa can “evaluate fundamentally new business models.” The payment company is also working with the company Anchoage, a federally chartered digital asset bank. Visa revealed that it upgraded its treasury and its integration with Anchorage will help the payment network support a central bank digital currency (CBDC) if one emerges in the next few years.
To read more about USDC, click here.
Jack Forestell, executive vice president and chief product officer at Visa noted: “Crypto-native fintechs want partners who understand their business and the complexities of digital currency form factors.”
“The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs managing their business in a stablecoin or cryptocurrency, and it’s really an extension of what we do every day, securely facilitating payments in all different currencies all across the world.”
Cryptocurrency markets reacted positively to Visa's announcement. During the morning trading sessions on Monday, the entire crypto market cap increased by 3%. At the time of publication, the crypto economy is valued at $1.71 trillion.
