Visa Takes the First-Mover Advantage by Allowing Crypto Transactions

Visa has announced its plan to use cryptocurrency USD coin (USDC) as a payment alternative for transactions with their credit cards. This gives a foot in the door for cryptocurrencies to be used as a payment solution on credit cards.

It was a great start to the week when Visa announced that it was allowing the use of USDC on its platform, to settle transactions. This is yet another instance where the mainstream financial industry has come in support of the digital asset.

The idea is that users are going to use cryptocurrency USDC to settle transactions instead of cash. This is being tested out by crypto.com as pretty exciting news.

The head of crypto at Visa noted that the company saw an increase in the demand to hold, access, and use crypto. Visa wants to satisfy its clients by meeting this consumer demand that is incessantly increasing.

This further brings on the point that this stuff is going conventional and more people are jumping on board. Visa has been the most aggressive major credit card company to be pushing through cryptocurrency.

It has been pretty striking to see visa celebrate its adventure in crypto land. They were briefly associated with Libra in 2019 and since then they have gone all out to integrate crypto into their existing system.

While it is still at its pilot stage right now, should it go onto production it will definitely be noticeable.

A lot of people don’t realize how credit card payments work. We live in this world of ones and zeros by moving balance sheets around and not actually moving cash from one place to another. It is really like a cumbersome, slow-moving, and expensive database so there is a good likelihood that stablecoins could change this. The stablecoins could speed up the process and bring the transaction face down, showing consumers its benefits.

Earlier in February, it was Mastercard that had showed its willingness to bring crypto on its platform. But Visa is moving ahead at a more rapid rate as compared to other companies. Visa really is seemingly trying to take the first-mover advantage in the crypto space by introducing USDC on the platform. It shall be interesting to see the ways they might alternatively try to benefit from this scheme and gain profit.

The USDC is a stable coin cryptocurrency having its value directly attached to the US dollar. The USD is issued by the federal government and people use it every day.  The idea of a stablecoin is that every time someone deposits one of these US dollars, they are going to mint a stablecoin. The stablecoin will represent that certain amount of money while being on the blockchain. Thus instead of using the money in the traditional payment system, you can use that money in the cryptocurrency space. Users can easily exchange it between other cryptocurrencies, so essentially stablecoins like USDC represent the fiat currency.

Visa is something that the mainstream population probably has in its wallet, they have a card that they swipe at the terminal. What is it going to take for people to use crypto at the terminal is food for thought for everyone out there. It seems that if they already have the card then it’s going to be pretty easy to switch to the crypto space.