Visa, the second largest card payments organization in the world, has plans to start working with exchanges and bitcoin wallets. These have been the statements of its CEO, Alfred Kelly, who pointed out that the multinational is interested in offering its payment network for the cryptocurrency market.
Kelly’s words were given in the Most recent Visa Earnings Conference, which was held via call. In this event, the manager described cryptocurrencies as “digital gold”, considering them a new type of asset that is not used as a form of payment “in a significant way.” Despite this feature, Alfred Kelly confirmed that the company wants to create its own financial solutions that are interoperable with this market.
“Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to allow users to purchase coins using their Visa credentials,” stressed the CEO. It is the first time that the company has made public its interest in working with the cryptocurrency ecosystem, since almost three years ago Alfred Kelly declared that the company would not process any type of transaction based on cryptographic assets.
Now Visa has 35 association agreements with platforms dedicated to the exchange or handling of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, according to its executive board. Kelly pointed out names like Crypto.com, BlockFi, Fold and even BitPanda in the presentation, these being some of the companies that could offer Visa services for their users in the near future.
Bitcoin is no longer despised by the payments giant Visa
As if that were not enough, the company is not closed to the possibility that in a near future some of these cryptocurrencies, be it Bitcoin or another, could become a more used form of money exchange. In this sense, Kelly stated that they could add said asset to their network, since it would be compatible with the processing of the other 160 fiat currencies with which the multinational works.
The Visa board also has stablecoins in its north ( stablecoins ) and digital currencies issued by central banks, such as the digital yuan. Based on his presentation, Kelly claims that these products have great potential to be used in global trade. Due to this, they also contemplate commercial strategies to integrate said blockchain networks to their network and work together.
This is a change of narrative that could indicate the increasingly certain future of currencies digital in society. Likewise, these statements can be translated as a kind of triumph for the cryptocurrency ecosystem that had been looked down upon by payment giants, including Mastercard among them. And it is that Bitcoin dethroned Visa last year as the largest financial entity in the world, as reported by CriptoNoticias at the time. A milestone that gives a lot to talk about and think about.
