If you weren’t sure before, you had better believe the cryptocurrency boom is here to stay.
Credit card companies don’t mess around; they will find the fastest route to making money and, on Monday, Visa stepped up its efforts on the crypto front.
Visa is bringing on USD Coin – a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar – for transactions across its payment network.
The Ethereum blockchain will be the pathway, according to a release. That’s a distributed accounting ledger based on the tech behind Bitcoin.
Fortune reported the groundbreaking transaction process as such:
Visa teamed with Crypto.com, a Hong Kong-based issuer of cryptocurrency-backed prepaid cards, sending Visa USD Coin. From there, Visa said it worked with Anchorage, a Visa-backed cryptocurrency startup that is one of the U.S.’s newest federally chartered banks, to accept the payment.
Its plan is to offer USDC settlement to more of its partners later this year.
“Crypto-native fintechs want partners who understand their business and the complexities of digital currency form factors,” Jack Forestell, executive vice president at Visa, said in the release.
“The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs (financial technology companies) 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.”
Fortune spoke to Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s cryptocurrency leader, asking why Visa wants in on this part of the economy.
The whole foundation of Visa … was built on the electronic movement of money,” Sheffield told Fortune. “Digital currency represents an evolution of money itself. Traditional fiat currencies and digital currencies are going to coexist for a long time. It’s important to have a bridge between them.”
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