By choosing Ethereum over other smart contracting platforms, one supporter, Adriano Feria, thinks Visa is relying on facts and fundamentals over everything else. In his view, he continues, “the decision is not a coincidence nor a conspiracy theory”.
Cuy Sheffield, Vice President and Head of Crypto at Visa, recently said at the 2023 StarkWare Sessions that it should be possible to convert between tokenized dollars and conventional dollars in the same way that dollars can be converted into euros during a cross-border transaction. Visa is making investments in areas like international settlement using fiat money and digital assets. The executive emphasized that that has been one of the areas they want to focus on.
Reports have it that Visa aims to accommodate customer requests to convert digital assets into fiat payments in a manner similar to how it converts foreign currencies.
In addition to stating that these are large-value settlement payments, Cuy Sheffield stated at the event that they have been experimenting with accepting USDC settlement payments from issuers starting on Ethereum and paying out in USDC on Ethereum.
Visa has been looking for ways to integrate blockchain technology into its existing network to achieve faster transactions. However, settlements still take place on the SWIFT system, a non-profit cooperative society created by European bankers to facilitate standardized and secure transaction communication among its members.
Sheffield also explained that they are all over SWIFT, so they cannot move money as frequently as they would like due to limitations in those networks. As a result, they have been experimenting with and testing different methods of accepting stablecoin settlement payments. He mentioned that fintech companies that operate in the cryptocurrency space might experience significant advantages and efficiencies as a result of being able to make settlement payments to Visa in digital currencies.
Al Kelly, the former CEO of Visa, shared a brief overview of the company’s plans for private stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) at Visa’s annual shareholder meeting. He asserted that they both play a significant role in the payments industry and that they have a number of projects going on.
According to Sheffield’s statement, they are looking into a number of options to take some of the benefits that Visa offers and apply them to existing bank rails, forms, and rebuilds that are built on top of blockchain rails, using stable boards. This further confirms the company’s perspective on blockchain technology and digital assets.
One of the first financial institutions to accept both blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies was Visa. The company is known to be a trusted network that facilitates digital payments using innovative technologies, and it has continued to live up to its name. The fact that Visa makes decisions after strategic planning further proves that it uses Ethereum not because of ideologies but because of facts and fundamentals.
