Visa, the leading payment card firm, is moving into the red-hot segment of stablecoins and has selected the USD Coin (USDC) for the job.
Visa has paved the way to join its mega payments network, which covers tens of millions of merchants and places the stablecoin for wide-scale adoption, for blockchain startup Circle’s Ethereum-based USDC.
With this collaboration, Visa has begun to arm a group of credit card issuers directly into their own networks with the stablecoin program to enable USDC transactions, Forbes announced today, citing Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s crypto head. The study noted that USDC, ranked 14th by market capitalization, would not customize Visa itself.
For its part, Circle, which was formed in 2013 and has undergone a transformation since operating as a wallet service for Bitcoin (BTC), enters the fintech-focused Fast Track program of Visa, from which it is expected to graduate from in 2021. Visa can issue a credit card after Circle itself graduates, which enables companies to submit and receive USDC payments directly from any company using the card, the study added.
“This is the first corporate card that will allow corporations to invest in the balance of USDC. And so we assume this would greatly improve the utility that USDC will provide for the business customers of Circle,” Sheffield was quoted as saying.
Visa has been expanding its contribution to the cryptocurrency space of late, rather than remaining on the sidelines. In addition to the newly announced BlockFi and Fold Visa cards, according to Forbes, the card giant has invested millions of dollars to fund a blockchain start-up and even has a “[mint] traditional currency on a blockchain” patent pending.
Instead of a competitor, the company considers USDC as one of its own networks, saying it acknowledges “significant value” that it can offer to consumers, who can then use the stablecoin to spend through the large merchant network of Visa.
Compared to USD Coin’s $2.8 billion USD, Visa has a market cap of $462 billion USD.
