Al Kelly, the chairman and CEO of the financial services firm Visa, said that during the Visa Q1 earnings call on January 28 (Thursday), he has devoted a portion of his comments to reaffirm its commitment to crypto payments and on-ramps, as well as explaining “how Visa thinks about crypto in general and our approach.”
It has been reported that the financial services firm with over $72 billion in assets as of 2019 has been aggressively pursuing crypto payments as of late, including by way of partnerships enabling crypto debit cards, and investing in Zap, a crypto payments startup.
However, in early January, Visa was forced to abandon a $5.3 billion acquisition of payments platform Plaid on antitrust grounds.
The report said that Thursday’s comments make it clear that Visa still has long-term plans in the sector, and the company believes itself to be in an excellent position to pursue them.
Kelly said:
“We believe that we are uniquely positioned to help make cryptocurrencies more safe, useful and applicable for payments by virtue of Visa’s size, integrations, and brand recognition.”
He further said that Visa groups blockchain assets into two categories: “cryptocurrencies that represent new assets such as Bitcoin” and serve as a store-of-value, and “stable coins that are directly backed by existing fiat currencies” which are more routinely used for payments.
In their Q1 earnings call on Thursday, financial giant Visa laid out a fiat on-ramp and stablecoin payments strategy for crypto… but seemed to be missing the plot when it comes to smart contract platforms. https://t.co/FKxYOeB6ej — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) January 30, 2021
Likewise, for store-of-value coins, Kelly said that Visa will angle to serve as a fiat on-ramp.
He added:
“Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally.”
It has been analyzed that Visa is taking a much more bullish stance by calling the cryptocurrencies “an emerging payments innovation, when it comes to stablecoins, which could have the potential to be used for global commerce, much like any other fiat currency,” and said that public blockchains can be thought of as payment rails similar to RPT or ACH networks.
Thus, the company also told investors that Visa would be poised to take advantage of any crypto that emerges as a dominant force in payments due to relationships with wallet providers such as “Crypto.com, [BlockFi], Fold and BitPanda,” as well as possible direct integration with their 160-currency payments network.
Source: Cointelegraph
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