Visa Eyes High-Value USDC Settlement Payments on Ethereum
“The same way that we can convert between dollars in euros on a cross-border transaction, we should be able to convert between digital tokenized dollars and traditional dollars,” Cuy Sheffield said.
Source: Shutterstock / Tada Images, modified by Blockworks
Payments giant Visa reportedly seeks to meet customer requests to convert digital assets into fiat payments, similar to how it converts foreign currencies.
“We’ve been testing how to actually accept settlement payments from issuers in USDC starting on Ethereum and paying out in USDC on Ethereum,” Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said during the StarkWare Sessions 2023 event in Tel Aviv. “So, these are large value settlement payments.”
He noted that the effort would clone foreign currency exchange executed on the card network’s payment platform.
Global settlement with digital assets and fiat currencies is an area in which Visa wants to build “muscle memory,” Cointelegraph reported, Sunday.
“The same way that we can convert between dollars in euros on a cross-border transaction, we should be able to convert between digital tokenized dollars and traditional dollars,” he said.
Visa didn’t return Blockworks’ request for comment by press time.
Visa announced the use of USDC, a stablecoin backed by the US dollar, to settle a transaction with the network over Ethereum in March 2021.
“We’re seeing wallets and crypto native neo-banks building payment products entirely with digital currency, and we want to meet these companies where they are,” Sheffield told Blockworks at the time. “The ability to make settlement payments to Visa in digital currencies could offer meaningful benefits and efficiencies, particularly for fintechs who run their business in crypto.”
Visa hasn’t yet integrated blockchain tech to support regular money movement on its network, but is currently exploring the move. Still, the company has already launched a blockchain-powered business-to-business payments network called B2B Connect.
It was among the first financial companies to embrace both blockchain and cryptocurrencies. To help clients and partners explore opportunities in the space, the firm launched a crypto advisory practice in late 2021.
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