Why VISA Thinks Bitcoin Has Potential In 5 Key Areas

Payments giant Visa has been expanding its involvement with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Per their Q2, 2021, Earnings Call, the company has a long roadmap and many plans to integrate these assets into its payment network.

Al Kelly, Chairman, and CEO at Visa talked about the “opportunities” the company is and would like to explore with BTC and digital assets. Kelly said he views this cryptocurrency as a “digital gold” due to the fact that people “hold” on to it.

In the crypto industry, Visa will focus on 5 areas. The first is to allow consumers to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The executive said Visa is working with exchange platforms and wallets to enable this feature. Kelly added:

I would say that this is a space that we are leaning into in a very, very big way and I think are extremely well-positioned.

Later, the payments giant is working on allowing customers to use a crypto cash-outs service. Thus, Visa’s network can convert funds in BTC or other cryptocurrencies into fiat. The converted funds will be available to make purchases at the 70 million Visa merchants. Kelly believes this will give “immediate utility to the digital currency”. He added:

We’ve got over 35 digital-currency platforms and wallets that have chosen to work with us. Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlockFi, Fold, Bitpanda are just some examples. And so that’s certainly a second big opportunity.

Bitcoin With Broader Use Cases On Top Of Visa

On the other hand, the company seeks to give its corporate partners and institutions a “crypto option”. With that in mind, Visa has created APIs.

These allowed for institutions to offer a buy, trade, and custody feature supported by Anchorage, a digital asset bank based in the United States. Later, Kelly referred to their fourth opportunity, settlement:

We’ve upgraded our infrastructure to allow a financial institution to settle with these in a digital currency with stablecoin, starting with USDC. (…) So, we’re going to now be able to support digital currencies as an additional settlement currency on our network.

For this purpose, Anchorage will also be a key component. The digital asset bank will aid Visa to integrate the mechanism to settle transactions in stablecoins, such as USD Coin (USDC). On their final area of opportunity, Kelly said its company will develop partnerships with banks.

In that way, they will incorporate and help secure central bank digital currencies (CBDC). On Bitcoin’s role in Visa’s plans, Vice Chairman and CFO, Vasan Prabhu, said the following:

The other use case that holds a lot of potential is to the extent that crypto-related transactions become significant, and we’re enabling, as you know, a vast number of them, one use case that is particularly useful in either stablecoin or Bitcoin-type scenarios is cross-border.

BTC is trading at $54.650,71 with sideways movement in the daily chart. In the weekly and monthly chart, BTC has minor losses with a 2.8% and 1.9%, respectively.