Visa Inc, a multinational financial services corporation, is planning to enter the cryptocurrency business to capture the business opportunity of becoming the mainstream payment vehicle.
Visa CEO Interview
Alfred F Kelly, the CEO of Visa, said that the financial services company is planning to enable the buying of Bitcoin on Visa credentials in a conversation at’ Fortune’s Leadership Next’ podcast. This came after Mastercard revealed its cryptocurrency plans in February.
During the podcast, Alfred F Kelly said that the company is planning to work with Bitcoin wallets. In February 2021, Visa announced a partnership with First Boulevard, a digitally native neobank focused on building generational wealth for the Black community to accelerate its efforts to enter the cryptocurrency market.
“We’re trying to do two things. One is to enable the purchase of bitcoin on Visa credentials. And secondly, working with bitcoin wallets to allow the bitcoin to be translated into a fiat currency and therefore immediately be able to be used at any of the 70 million places around the world where Visa is accepted,” Alfred F Kelly said.
Earlier in February, Mastercard announced it was planning to offer support for some cryptocurrencies on its network this year, joining a string of big-ticket firms that pledged similar support. However, the company specified that not all cryptocurrencies will be supported on their network, adding that many of the hundreds of digital assets in circulation still need to tighten their compliance measures.
Due to the recent surge in retail and institutional demand for Bitcoin, several financial firms worldwide have started working on accepting BTC as a payment method, such as Tesla, CoinFlip, one of the leading Bitcoin ATM providers in the US, Blackrock and Paypal.
Currently, bitcoin is trading at $54,811.73 at 3.20 P.M East African time, a 7 % decline from the all-time high of $61,000 that the digital currency hit on Saturday.
