Visa Reaffirms Crypto Strategy, Mastercard Touts Blockchain

Visa will continue to focus on its strategy to serve as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto, a company spokesperson told Blockworks

article-image

Tada Images/Shutterstock.com modified by Blockworks

share

Visa says it intends to continue working on its crypto strategy in light of recent reports that say otherwise, while rival Mastercard has flagged intent to focus on a more neutral area: blockchain.

An earlier report by Reuters said both payments giants would be halting cryptocurrency activities following the collapse of high-profile companies in the industry.

Visa has since denied that’s the case. Cuy Sheffield, Visa vice president and head of crypto, tweeted to claim that the Reuters report is inaccurate. 

A Visa spokesperson told Blockworks that the company would continue to monitor the cryptocurrency industry and regulatory developments.

“Our priority is, and will always be, maintaining the integrity of the Visa payments system and protecting the interests of consumers, merchants, and our clients,” the spokesperson said.

They noted that the recent failures in the industry will not change its strategy — which is to serve as a bridge between traditional finance customers and the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

“At Visa, we don’t pick winners and losers. Our job is to support an array of ways to pay and to study new technologies that may impact the future of payments,” the spokesperson said. “To that end, we’re focused on growing our core competencies in Web3 infrastructure layers and evaluating the blockchain protocols driving crypto development.”

Loading Tweet..

Mastercard has not outrightly denied the allegations made in the Reuters article but told Blockworks that it would continue looking into use cases for crypto’s underlying blockchain technology.

“Our efforts continue to be focused on the underlying blockchain technology and how that can be applied to help address current pain points and build more efficient systems for consumers and businesses,” a Mastercard spokesperson said. 

It’s unclear whether those plans include crypto, stablecoins or public (permissionless) blockchain networks. Blockworks has reached out for more information.

In any case, Mastercard’s strategy aligns with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) recent posturing toward blockchain networks, which it believes to be “more transformative than the initial wave of cryptoassets.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The House on Thursday passed the CLARITY Act, a landmark cryptocurrency market structure bill

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro