What to Know:
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Visa expands stablecoin payment services, partnering with banks and governments.
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Stablecoins could grow to $2T, with big potential in emerging markets.
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Visa positions itself as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto payments.
Visa has long been a pillar of global payments. Now, Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, sees a growing chance for the company in the $2 trillion stablecoin wave. Stablecoins offer speed and low fees, making them more and more appealing for cross-border transfers and remittances.
Sheffield’s team has been hard at work making Visa’s stablecoin payment services bigger. They’ve made deals with fintech companies all over the world and worked with big banks to help them start their own tokens. It’s clear that Visa wants to become the place where people go to pay with stablecoins.
Building the Infrastructure Now
According to Bloomberg, Visa isn’t just sitting back and doing nothing; they’re actively changing the stablecoin scene. Visa has since added more stablecoin payment services, which makes it easier for customers to use these digital tokens to move money. They are also trying partnerships with banks and governments to make stablecoins together.
Visa is also working closely with fintech companies to make sure that stablecoins work well with current payment systems. By making it as simple as possible for people to accept, they’re building systems that can handle billions of token transfers, which puts them at the top of the stablecoin economy. In June, Visa inked a deal with Yellow Card, a stablecoin payments company that operates globally, including many African countries. They’ll explore stablecoin use in treasury operations, liquidity management, and crossborder transfers.
Visa is still strong, even though it has to deal with some fundamental problems, such as regulatory pressure to lower swipe fees. Its stock went up 30% in the last year, and in the third quarter, it made $10.2 billion, which is 14% more than the previous quarter.
Why This Matters
Card heavy payment methods with lots of fees and wait times have been used for years in traditional finance. That can be changed by stablecoins. They can settle right away, easily move money across countries, and pay a lot less because they use blockchain technology.
Visa’s move into stablecoins shows a clear change. Instead of fighting digital currencies, it is becoming more of a link between old and new financial systems. The stablecoin market has grown 62% over the past year to reach nearly $269 billion, according to tracker DeFiLlama, and could expand to as much as $2 trillion within the next three years, according to Standard Chartered Bank. Still, they facilitate only about $30 billion of transactions daily, less than 1% of global money flows.
What’s Next for Visa and Crypto Payments
As stablecoins continue to grow in popularity, they will have the most significant effect on developing economies. Visa says that the countries in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia that don’t have easy access to modern banking will gain the most. Stablecoins can be a faster and more reliable way for regular people in these places to store and send money than traditional banking systems.
“This is just another mechanism for value exchange,” Sheffield said of stablecoins broadly, in an interview from Visa’s offices in San Francisco. “I see it massively expanding our addressable market.”
More attention is being paid to stablecoins, which could mean that simpler rules are on the way soon. More and more, governments and officials are aware of their benefits and risks. Once new rules are in place, Visa’s ready-made infrastructure could give it an early edge.
Final Thoughts
Visa’s moves show a smart shift toward accepting change instead of fighting it. Visa is getting ready for a time when stablecoins will be able to handle trillions of dollars by building tools, relationships, and settlement systems now.
As fintech changes and rules become clearer, Visa could become the main way that people use stablecoins to pay for things. This is a surprising but perfect role for a payments giant that has built its business on trust and dependability for decades.
Also Read: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Now Accepts Bitcoin for Space Travel Payments
