Visa has officially launched its pilot program with payment and crypto platform Crypto.com as it aims to provide the option to more of its partners in the latter half of the year.
The USD Coin (USDC) is a stablecoin cryptocurrency that has its value pegged directly to the US dollar.
Visa’s decision comes at a time when important finance firms, such as BlackRock Inc, BNY Mellon, and Mastercard Inc, have already embraced digital coins, which makes many believe that crypto will soon be a part of regulator investment portfolios.
One of the most important steps was taken the previous week when Elon Musk announced that US residents could buy Teslas using Bitcoin.
“We see increasing demand from consumers across the world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies and we’re seeing demand from our clients to be able to build products that provide that access for consumers,” revealed Cuy Sheffield, the head of crypto at Visa.
Traditionally, if a person wants to use a Crypto.com Visa card in order to buy a coffee, the digital currency that is held in the crypto wallet has to be converted into traditional money.
According to Reuters, the crypto wallet would deposit traditional fiat currency in a bank account, which is then wired to Visa at the end of the day, which has to settle all transactions, thus making the transactions costlier and more complex.
The step taken by Visa, which will make use of the Ethereum blockchain, removes the need of converting the digital coin into traditional money for a transaction to be settled.
Visa also revealed that it had partnered with digital asset bank Anchorage and that it had realized the first transaction this March, with Crypto.com sending USDC to Visa’s Ethereum address at Anchorage.