By
Temitope Olatunji
April 24th, 2024
Recently, the payment giant has been testing different ways to get over the existing obstacles and check if it will be able to accept settlement payments made using stablecoins on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
American multinational financial services company Visa Inc (NYSE: V) is planning to keep its focus on the crypto industry, paying more attention to stablecoin settlements. At the Starkware Sessions 2023, Visa’s Vice President and Head of Crypto Cuy Sheffield shared the company’s crypto vision. According to Sheffield, Visa’s ultimate goal is to enable its customers to convert digital assets into fiat currencies.
Visa Planning Stablecoin Settlements
Cuy Sheffield explained:
“We’ve been testing how to actually accept settlement payments from issuers in USDC starting on Ethereum and paying out in USDC on Ethereum. So, these are large value settlement payments.”
Further, he mentioned that this is the area in which Visa is seeking to “build muscle memory.”
Sheffield added:
“The same way that we can convert between dollars in euros on a cross-border transaction, we should be able to convert between digital tokenized dollars and traditional dollars.”
The key obstacle for the company is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system that still handles most of the settlements. The system has numerous limitations such as slow transaction processing that can take up to five working days or higher fees due to multiple banks involved in transactions. As a result, Visa can not move money as often as it would like to.
Recently, the payment giant has been testing different ways to get over the existing obstacles and check if it will be able to accept stablecoin settlement payments on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
Cuy Sheffield said:
“We’re thinking a lot about how to take some of the value that visa provides on existing bank rails, with existing forms of beyond in a rebuild that on top of blockchain rails, using stable boards. If we think there are huge opportunities in that area, it just kind of stays on emerging.”
Earlier, former Visa CEO Al Kelly was also briefly speaking on the company’s plans for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins, claiming that they can play “a meaningful role in the payments space.” He also mentioned that Visa had numerous initiatives underway.
Visa’s Crypto Initiatives
As per the company’s website, Visa is aiming to facilitate bridging a gap between digital currencies and the traditional financial system. Despite the current downturn in the industry, the company still finds crypto assets, especially stablecoins, promising, and it has not suffered any credit losses.
In October 2022, Visa unveiled a joint blockchain payment gateway in partnership with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). Besides, Visa was talking about launching its own crypto wallet. As we reported at that time, the Visa International Service Association filed two applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its character mark to be used in software “to view, access, store, monitor, manage, trade, send, receive, transmit, and exchange” crypto assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)”.
Later, in December, Visa was planning to allow customers to make auto payments from their Ethereum self-custodied crypto wallets.