Visa enables the acceptance of cryptocurrencies

Executive Director (CEO) of the financial service “Visa”, Al Kelly said his company is able to make cryptocurrencies more “secure, useful and enforceable”. He can add them to the Visa payment network. Speaking at the company’s fiscal profit conference in the first quarter of 2021, Kelly described cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as “digital gold.” But, he added, “still, they are not used as a form of payment on a daily basis.”

“Our strategy here is to work with portfolios and foreign exchange. This is to enable users to purchase cryptocurrencies using their Visa credentials. “They can also withdraw money from our credentials to make a cash purchase.”

The CEO also said that stable currencies could be used for “global trade”. As for “digital currencies”, as he said, they can be used to transfer them from one place to another.

Kelly added: “Today, 35 of the major platforms and digital currencies have already chosen to accept Visa. These include Crypto.com, BlockFi, Fold and BitPanda. These portfolio relationships represent the potential for more than 50 million Visa credentials. “It goes without saying that as long as a specific digital currency is becoming a popular medium of exchange, there is no reason why we should not add it to our network, which already supports over 160 currencies.”

Visa may now accept cryptocurrency

However, to achieve this, Kelly says his organization will treat the crypto market into two segments, namely as two distinct segments: traditional cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and Ether, fiat-backed digital currencies, stable coins, and central bank digital currencies.

For the first segment, Visa will work with “wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto a Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants accepting Visa globally”.

This is similar to card schemes to connect with closed-loop wallets such as Line Pay and Paytm.