Earlier today, Visa Inc announces a major move in which the company will allow the use of cryptocurrency to settle transactions. This report comes courtesy of Reuters‘ exclusive coverage. In this new move, the American finance company revealed that it will make use of stable coin USD Coin to settle the transactions on its network. This new development becomes yet another major step towards the adoption of cryptocurrency.
Visa initially partners with Crypto.com for cryptocurrency payment settlements!
Visa has launched this pilot program with cryto.com, a popular payment and crypto platform. For those who’re unaware, the service also provides Visa cards to its users. With that said, Visa has ensured that it will add more partners by the end of this year. Earlier today, Viva executed the first transactions settled in USDC.
For those who’re unaware, USDC (or USD Coin) is a stable coin cryptocurrency launched by Coinbase and Circle in 2018. The USDC is pegged directly to the U.S. dollar with a 1:1 ratio. In fact, it is the 12th largest cryptocurrency in the market at the time of writing this. According to the company, the sudden move comes after looking at the “increasing demand from consumers across the world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies”.
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With this new move, Visa aims to strip out the need to convert digital coins into traditional money for settled transactions. For this very purpose, the company will be using the Ethereum blockchain. For instance, if you decide to pay for a coffee using a Crypto.com Visa card, then the digital currency in your cryptocurrency wallet needs to be converted to traditional money.
To settle the transaction, the cryptocurrency wallet will then deposit traditional fiat currency in a bank account. It will then be wired to Visa at the end of the day. The entire process sounds quite complex and might be costing the company excess resources. To fix this annoying problem, Visa decided to make use of the Ethereum blockchain to settle payments.
The company has partnered with digital asset bank Anchorage. In fact, it has settled the first transaction in which Crypto.com sent USDC to Visa’s Ethereum address at Anchorage.
Growing acceptance of digital currencies!
Visa is not the only company to openly accept the rise of digital currencies. In fact, Tesla recently announced that customers can now buy its electric vehicles with bitcoin. Other financial companies such as BNY Mellon, BlackRock Inc, and Mastercard Inc have also taken the step to make more use of cryptocurrencies.
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