Payment Giant Visa Integrates USDC Stablecoin Support for Settlement
On Monday, the American multinational financial services corporation Visa announced that digital currency payments have arrived on Visa’s settlement platform. The payment giant revealed that the company will leverage USD coin (USDC), the regulated token built on top of the Ethereum network.
A lot Has Changed Since Dee Hock founded Visa
Visa has announced cryptocurrency integration with its settlement platform on March 29. The company said a lot has changed since Dee Hock founded Visa, and nowadays Visa must “accommodate new form factors for money.”
BREAKING: Visa has become the first major payment network to incorporate a digital dollar (USDC) into their network and settle transactions in the new system, rather than the old banking system.
Eventually every payment network will do this.
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) March 29, 2021
Visa is piloting the new USD coin (USDC) capabilities with the cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com and then will offer USDC settlement capabilities to other customers in the future.
“The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs managing their business in a stablecoin or cryptocurrency, and it’s really an extension of what we do every day, securely facilitating payments in all different currencies all across the world,” Visa said during Monday’s announcement.
Working With the Digital Asset Bank Anchorage and CBDCs
Visa also emphasized that the ability to leverage USDC will help native crypto companies and Visa can “evaluate fundamentally new business models.” The payment company is also working with the company Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank. Visa revealed that it upgraded its treasury and its integration with Anchorage will help the payment network support a central bank digital currency (CBDC) if one emerges in the next few years.
“Crypto-native fintechs want partners who understand their business and the complexities of digital currency form factors,” Jack Forestell, executive vice president and chief product officer at Visa noted. “The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs managing their business in a stablecoin or cryptocurrency, and it’s really an extension of what we do every day, securely facilitating payments in all different currencies all across the world.”
Since the Visa announcement, cryptocurrency markets saw a lift in value on Monday morning. Bitcoin (BTC) jumped close to 4% during the morning trading sessions and the entire crypto market cap increased by 3%. At the time of publication, the crypto economy is valued at $1.67 trillion.
What do you think about Visa adding the stablecoin USDC to the company’s settlement platform? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.