This implies that clients can make purchases from any retailer who accepts Visa, including those who do not take cryptocurrency.
During the first six months of 2021, more than $1 billion was spent on Visa cards that were linked to cryptocurrency.
FTX and Coinbase are among the cryptocurrency companies with which Visa has partnered to allow customers to spend and exchange digital currencies through its card programme, the company revealed on Wednesday.
The cooperation will make it simple for clients to convert and spend digital currencies at more than 70 million merchant locations across the world, even those that do not yet accept digital currencies.
“The merchants don’t have to change anything,” Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of cryptocurrencies, told Business Insider. “To them, it will be treated the same as any other Visa transaction. However, the crypto assets are instantaneously turned into fiat currency on the backend.”
“An increasing number of consumers are placing their assets on cryptocurrency platforms, trading crypto and holding crypto – all while millions of retailers are failing to grasp the underlying concepts of cryptocurrency. Their main concern is that they will have to update their point of sale systems and terminals, as well as figuring out what a blockchain is “he explained.
It is one of the benefits being offered – though the specifics may vary depending on the cryptocurrency platform – that users can spend fiat money and receive cryptocurrencies in exchange as a reward, in a similar way to how users can get cashback, airline miles, or hotel points.
With more than $1 billion spent on crypto-linked Visa cards in the first half of 2021, Sheffield is optimistic that there is more to be unlocked in the crypto-linked card space.
On March 29, the payments company announced that it will allow users to settle payment transactions on its platform using the USD Coin cryptocurrency. The payment option trialled by Visa was made possible using the payment platform Crypto.com and the digital asset bank Anchorage.
The ability to support digital fiat currencies as well as convert between the digital form of a fiat currency and the traditional version of a fiat currency should be possible, according to him.
