Visa is examining a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow banks to offer Cryptocurrency services.
In a press statement, the payment giant said the Visa Crypto APIs pilot program will let clients “easily connect into the infrastructure provided by Visa’s partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell digital assets such as bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences.”
Last week, Alfred Francis Kelly, Visa CEO, said they were planning to allow stable coins to be used for global commerce. He further added that they wanted the digital currency to be recognized as a worldwide means of exchange.
The news comes after Visa announced its partnership with five Black banks and fintech’s to offer financial and business services that cater to the Black community.
The first firm to join the Visa pilot was First Boulevard, a digital bank that builds tools to help African Americans passively build wealth and launch sometime in early 2021. The bank plans to use the bitcoin services and its partnership with Visa to educate its customers about bitcoin to close the general wealth disparities faced by Black communities, said Donald Hawkins, president and CEO of First Boulevard.
Visa has however issued a waitlist for other banks to join the program.
