More than $ 1 billion has been spent on VISA crypto cards

VISA feels at home in the crypto sector

The multinational company VISA announced through an official statement that its payment cards supporting cryptocurrencies recorded expenses in excess of $ 1 billion in the first half of 2021. To a large extent, this dispels various misconceptions that cryptocurrencies are not good currency and that no one wants to pay with them. VISA clearly feels at home in the cryptocurrency sector, and decisions in favour of working with crypto companies have clearly paid to them. The company noted that it has partnered with 50 major companies in the crypto industry and allowed their users to convert and spend digital currencies at 70 million merchants worldwide.

Given the report and the volume of spending mentioned, it is clear that the cryptocurrency community sees value in linking digital assets to the VISA global payment network. The company was not very optimistic about crypto-linked cards and estimated that they would record much fewer expenses. They also consider it a great advantage of the whole system that it does not require global merchants to accept cryptocurrencies directly. VISA has been cooperating with a number of companies for a long time, and the most well-known from the crypto world certainly include Crypto.com, FTX, Coinbase, CoinZoom and many others.

We will use cryptocurrencies like any regular FIAT currency

They see great added value, for example, in stablecoins - cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of other assets, or FIAT currencies. According to VISA, stablecoins are relatively close to fulfilling the idea of a fully digital FIAT. They added that stablecoins are well on their way to becoming an important part of the wider digital transformation of financial services, and VISA is excited to help shape and support this development. The company is working intensively on strategies to connect cryptocurrencies to their network so as to bring added value to all forms of money transfers.

CFO Vasant Prabhu said they were doing everything they could to create an ecosystem that would make cryptocurrencies usable, such as any common FIAT currency. In addition, they add various loyalty programs to these solutions, which they bring from the "old school". For example, they allow users to spend FIAT and obtain cryptocurrencies. It is good to understand that VISA, together with its partners, is building completely new ecosystems, which may in the future be the cornerstones of an economy based on blockchain and decentralization.

For the time being, VISA and other payment companies are only warming up in the crypto area

The global giant recorded a total volume of almost $ 38 billion in processed transactions in the first quarter of 2021. This clearly shows that cryptocurrencies are so far only a side business for VISA in terms of revenue. Prabhu said they do not plan to add any cryptocurrencies to their portfolio and they will not follow companies such as Tesla, MicroStrategy and others. Many argue that adoption by large companies is healthy for cryptocurrencies. However, long-standing advocates of cryptocurrencies believe that these companies are deeply rooted in traditional banking systems and are forcing crypto projects to compromise against their decentralized nature.

Of course, the market is also being examined by the competition that for VISA represents mainly MasterCard. It was this company that recently found in its survey that up to 93% of North American consumers plan to use cryptocurrencies or other new payment technology next year, and 75% of millennials would use cryptocurrencies if they understood them better. The goal of MasterCard, in cooperation with the Gemini crypto exchange, is to launch its own crypto-linked payment card.