Visa Partners with First Boulevard to Pilot New Crypto APIs

| Updated
by Ibukun Ogundare · 3 min read
Visa Partners with First Boulevard to Pilot New Crypto APIs
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The president and CEO of First Boulevard Donald Hawkins expressed his excitement over the partnership with Visa.

Visa Inc (NYSE: V) revealed in an announcement that digitally native neobank First Boulevard would be the first client to pilot its new suite of application programming interfaces (APIs). Although First Boulevard would be the first to pilot the crypto APIs, Visa has issued a waitlist for other bank clients.

Visa Partners with First Boulevard

Visa revealed its new partnership with First Boulevard in an announcement on the 3rd of February. With the partnership, First Boulevard customers will have access to trading and custody cryptocurrencies held by digital asset bank Anchorage. The announcement stated:

“The pilot will serve as a key first step in supporting API capabilities that help additional Visa clients access and integrate crypto features into their product offering, and is anticipated to launch later this year.”

Visa chief product officer Jack Forestell explained:

“We set out to make Visa the bridge between digital currencies and our global network of 70 million merchants and today we are the leading network for crypto wallets with 35 crypto platforms choosing to issue Visa. With this pilot program, we want to extend the value of Visa to our neobank and financial institution clients by providing an easy bridge to crypto assets and blockchain networks.”

The president and CEO of First Boulevard Donald Hawkins expressed his excitement over the partnership. He noted that the First Boulevard aims at helping the Black community build wealth. He also said that the neobank is “thrilled” to partner with Visa. According to the CEO, leveraging Visa’s crypto APIs is another channel for the Black community to build Black wealth.

Furthermore, the announcement revealed that First Boulevard will launch “First Boulevard Visa Debit Card.”

Anchorage president and co-founder Diogo Monica also expressed his pleasure with the latest development. He said the API program would advance the accessibility of crypto. Also, it will aid the inclusion of crypto as an asset class in payments and financial services. Monica added:

“We are thrilled to be working alongside Visa and First Boulevard to build the infrastructure for a more secure and equitable financial future.”

Visa Stock

Currently, at the pre-market, Visa stock is 0.12% up over its previous close of $201.36. Data compiled by MarketWatch revealed that the company had lost nearly 1% over the past year. Also, V stock has declined by 7.94% in its year-to-date record. The data also stated that the financial services company had plunged 5.82% over the past month.

In addition to recent losses, Visa also declined 28% to $1.45 billion in the international transaction revenue, according to the company’s Q1 earnings results for the 2021 fiscal year.

Despite the declines, Visa stock upped 1.88% over the past month and has increased by 1.58% in the last five days.

As revealed in the earnings report, the financial services company exceeded earlier predictions. The company recorded an increase in its Earnings Per Share (EPS), growth, and data processing revenue.

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